Editorial: Political refusal to take tough decisions are behind the problems in health and public services

​When the Labour Party got rid of the winter fuel allowance for many pensioners there was uproar.

​There were some quite good arguments for removing such a payment to the most affluent elderly people, and keeping it for everyone else. The problem with that is that it is complicated to do, and in the end does not save very much money.

Now the payment issue is in the spotlight due to the first UK-wide proper cold spell since the Labour Party came to power.

The new government tried to push through the decision early in its time in office, which is politically good time to do difficult things.

But it at the same time did easy but irresponsible things, that cost far more.

It gave significant pay rises to the public sector, which is a vast number of people across the UK. It did not demand efficiencies or improvements to go with that, for example asking train drivers to do more for a huge rise.

Not only was this a capitulation to strikes, it failed to explain to the population at large that public sector pensions are so much more generous than those for private workers that one former Chancellor of the Exchequer estimated it to be worth a 25% pay uplift.

Such pensions were banished from the private sector when they bankrupted companies. If this was widely understood, there would be outrage at cutting fuel payments to the elderly, which save a small amount of taxpayers’ money, and paying public sectors more when they already do so much better on pensions.

Meanwhile, Stormont is equally populist. For all the warnings about the appalling pressures on health over this cold spell, MLAs refused to make NHS provision more efficient, as experts like Bengoa urged them to do, and this political failure is at the heart of the pressures on health provision and A&E.