Labour's NHS targets "needlessly" cost 1,200 lives in Staffordshire

The Daily Mail is devastating for Labour this morning:

"Not a single official has been disciplined over the worst-ever NHS hospital scandal, it emerged last night. Up to 1,200 people lost their lives needlessly because Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust put government targets and cost-cutting ahead of patient care. But none of the doctors, nurses and managers who failed them has suffered any formal sanction. Indeed, some have either retired on lucrative pensions or have swiftly found new jobs... The devastating-report into the Stafford Hospital-shambles' laid waste to Labour's decade-long obsession with box-ticking and league tables."

Read the full Daily Mail report.

Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley commented:

“This report lays bare the awful standards that patients had to suffer at Stafford hospital. I want to express again our deepest sympathies for them and their families.

But the Government needs to recognise that this latest report does not diminish the need for a full public inquiry.  The only way to finally eliminate the culture of secrecy and fear which pervaded Stafford Hospital is to look at these issues with maximum transparency and openness.

Last year we told the Government that it needed to look at not just the failings at the hospital but also at the role played by the Strategic Health Authority, the Primary Care Trust and the Department of Health.  It is not good enough that they have only chosen to investigate this now. Patients will be worried that the Government is still not doing all it can to ensure that these awful events are not repeated.”