FOR as long as most Islanders can remember, health provision in Jersey has compared very favourably indeed with the UK’s National Health Service.

However, although medical care here might still be well above average, our new Health Minister, Senator Jim Perchard, has painted a picture of declining standards occasioned by inadequate funding. Indeed, he has spoken of a health ‘time-bomb’ primed and waiting to explode.

Among the current problems faced by the service are a shortage of beds – so acute that general practitioners are being asked to treat patients at home – too few nursing staff and an Ambulance Service work-to-rule. As a result, operations have been cancelled and some patients have experienced long waits on trolleys before receiving attention.

Such difficulties will only be compounded as the average age of the Island’s population rises, as demand for care and treatment for the elderly increases and as buildings and equipment deteriorate.

To his credit, Senator Perchard has pledged that there will be no move away from free hospital services while he heads Health. However, he is also uncompromising when it comes to offering a strategy for staving off the crisis that he believes is just around the corner. More funding, he says, must be forthcoming from States coffers.

This will not go down well with those inside and outside the House who fervently believe that public sector economies must be made across the board. Nor is it easy to see where the extra money will come from unless, as Chief Minister Terry Le Sueur has said, further tax hikes will be considered if vital expenditure cannot be funded through cost savings in less critical areas.

While it is legitimate to ask how and why our health service has been allowed to slip into the decline that Senator Perchard is now describing, answers to such questions will do nothing to address the issues of concern that have been so dramatically highlighted.

What is clearly needed is a full and objective analysis of the condition of the service and appropriate levels of funding based on two underlying principles – that the people of this Island are entitled to expect the very best health care and that a great many of them would put investment in this vital area at the very top of their list of public spending priorities.