JUST as the Referendum Party's doom showed, Europe was not the big issue of the general election with the voters.

But today the government addresses what, along with crime, really was one of their top concerns - the future of the NHS.

True, Labour had a clear manifesto pledge to cut waiting lists and inject £100million into patient care by cutting bureaucracy.

But their landslide victory leaves them with a much greater obligation on health - since one of the prime reasons for their massive majority was the mandate the voters gave them to "save" the NHS.

For they could see it deep in trouble from their own experiences.

They did not need statistics to know that waiting lists were rising.

They could see with their own eyes the winter bed jams, the patients left on trolleys and the too-few doctors and nurses run off their feet on the wards.

And just as a study in East Lancashire showed this month, they were well aware that droves of sick patients were being discharged too soon under the pressure of waiting lists, staffing levels and bed availability.

They were well aware, too, of the NHS's cash crisis - the sort that, in our region, axes vital breast cancer nurses' jobs for the sake of just £26,000.

It is all these sort of concerns that - on top of its manifesto commitments - Labour is now expected to ease.

And it looks like being a tough task for, now they have seen the books, health ministers are confronted by the depth of the crisis that was reflected in the voters' own experiences.

Waiting lists, we learn, have shot up in the last quarter by nearly 60,000 to more than 1.1million and many hospitals have budget deficits of millions of pounds.

Clearly, Labour's manifesto commitments and red-tape savings - actually worth just one day's NHS expenditure - will only scratch the surface.

It is an immediate problem for the Chancellor, given the new government's general commitment to the Tories' previous spending levels and no increases in income tax.

Today it moves towards meeting its manifesto pledges but the government will find that, on health, blaming the Tories for what they have inherited is something the voters have already emphatically done in the ballot box and what they really want is significant improvements in resources for the NHS.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.