MP Anne Main slams low food spend for sick hospital patients (From St Albans & Harpenden Review)

MP Anne Main slams low food spend for sick hospital patients

4:54pm Wednesday 11th March 2009

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LESS than £2 a day on food is being spent by hospitals to feed Hertfordshire's sick patients, the MP for St Albans has highlighted.

MP Anne Main said “worrying” Government figures show the hospitals are spending significantly less on meals for patients compared to other areas in the country.

The figures from the NHS Information Centre show that St Albans City Hospital is forking out among the lowest daily spend on food.

Mrs Main noted that this is even less that the Prison Service spends on its prisoners.

She said: “Frankly, I find this extremely worrying. Patients need a good balanced diet to help them recover, so it is galling that even prisoners are fed better than Hertfordshire's sick patients.

“This news comes after the Government's 2006 decision to scrap its Better Hospital Food Programme, designed to improve the food available in our hospital in a cost cutting exercise.

“It can be no coincidence that our patients are allocated among the lowest NHS funding per head in the country. I don't know how any politician can maintain that it is 'fair' to redistribute funds to the extent that there appears to be only a measly £2 or less left over in the budget to spend daily on food, I can't even imagine how our local hospitals are managing to ensure patients have a balanced diet on less than £2 a day.”

She added: “We should not allow Hertfordshire's patients to be disadvantaged. The Government needs to face up to the fact that the funding formula for Hertfordshire is causing real financial constraints and this meagre food budget only underlines this.”

Mrs Main said Watford General Hospital and Hemel Hempstead Hospital are also cutting short their daily spend on patients.

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