THE one firm policy pledge made by John Major at the Conservative Party conference was to boost NHS spending.

It seems he had better hurry up if the government is not to run into another winter of horrid headlines about full-up and hard-up hospitals.

The disclosure today, by health bosses that the NHS needs another £200million to prevent it going into debt this year and more to keep it afloat in the future, is a warning the government must heed.

For, despite the government having spent £7.7billion extra, or 13 per cent in real terms, on the NHS since 1992, the Tories are vulnerable on health - and in the run-up to the election cannot afford to be even more so.

Yet the political effects are one thing; the practical consequences are another.

Already we see the winter "bad news" syndrome starting. A cash-strapped hospital trust in West London is refusing admissions of patients over 75.

In East Anglia, another broke trust faces being shut down.

Now, we hear lots more are in financial trouble - and considering cuts.

Is it the old patients-on-trolleys-on-corridors nightmare coming back again?

If so, the government must dispel it in next month's Budget so that Mr Major's platform pledges have visible impact on those corridors and on the waiting lists.

For though the NHS cannot ever have all the resources it needs, when they start falling so far away from the demands on it that hospital doors are shut in the face of 75-year-olds, then an emergency injection is needed - not just for saving the government's skin, but for humanity's sake.

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