The next four years will see the majority of chancellor George Osborne’s cuts – 60% – hit home. And spending per patient in the NHS will fall by over 9%

Research by the country’s leading independent research organisation, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, reports that the ConDem government’s swingeing cuts, principally to welfare budgets and local authority spending, will continue until 2018. And that today we haven’t even reached the half-way point, with the bulk of them to fall in the next five years.

Spending on the NHS, says the IFS, while maintained at present levels, will actually drop by 9.1% because of a growing and ageing population.