The NHS ended the last financial year with deficits amounting to £1.3 billion. Gordon Brown has now ordered drastic and short-sighted NHS cuts. The Royal College of Nursing estimated in August 2006 that 18,000 jobs have been cut from NHS hospitals in recent months. Conservative Party analysis to update these figures now suggests that the total number of job losses is approaching 20,000.

Despite Labour's much-vaunted claim that its primary care White Paper, Our Health, Our Care, Our Say, published on 30 January 2006, would spell a reprieve for community hospitals, 81 are still threatened by of cutbacks or closure, according to the Community Hospitals Association. 2,036 bed losses have already occurred since April, suggesting that up to 4,000 beds may be lost from the NHS over the whole financial year. This is on top of the 2,500 beds which were lost from NHS hospitals in 2004-05 and the 6,000 beds cut from NHS hospitals in 2005-06. In just three years, therefore, the NHS is set to lose 12,500 beds – a cut in capacity of 7 per cent.

The causes of the NHS financial crisis are legion – but many are due to Labour failure:

Ministerial meddling: There have been ten major reorganisations of the NHS since Labour came to power.

Waste: The number of managers in the NHS is increasing almost three times as fast as the number of doctors and nurses. There are now 264,012 administrators in the NHS, compared to 175,646 beds.

Inadequate planning: Labour's failure to pilot the new NHS staff contracts adequately has created a 'black hole' in NHS finances of £610 million.

Unfair funding: Labour's system of resource allocation means that the areas with most demand on their health services no longer receive the most money.

What needs to be done – our approach

An end to Labour's interference: Labour's interference has now led to the tenth reorganisation of the NHS since it came to power nine years ago. We believe decisions affecting local services should not be taken by distant politicians, but by the patients and frontline staff who use and work in our local NHS.

Money where it is needed: Under Labour, too much money has been diverted from patient care by an NHS bureaucracy which has swelled its ranks by over 100,000 people since 1997. And the money which does get through is not going where it is needed. We believe NHS money should go straight to GPs at the frontline, without Labour's interference along the way.

Long-term thinking: Gordon Brown's financial mismanagement is forcing short-term decision-making. Hospitals are closing their wards to patients without replacing wards with the services in the community needed. Because of the financial crisis, Labour politicians have ignored the very real challenges stacking up for the future – for example, obesity, alcohol abuse, and sexually transmitted diseases. We believe that tackling tomorrow's challenges today will save us lives and resources in the long term.

We want everyone to show their support for the NHS and those who work in it by signing our petition calling on Gordon Brown to end his financial mismanagement of the NHS – and Stop Brown's NHS Cuts.