First I should say that I have some historical interest here. I was an executive director in the London SHA when this trust was created by the merger of three existing trusts. The trusts that were merged were not viable. But the trust that the merger created has also turned out not to be viable and I think we should have been more aware of this at the time. When the NHS did not really know what to do it merged problem hospitals into a single institution. (As you will see from my comments below, this is something the NHS still does all the time).

For much of the last two years the South London Trust has been losing about £1 million a week. For as long as money didn’t matter, those sorts of sums never seemed to worry the NHS. But in fact the £1 million that is lost every week is money that is not being spent on health care for others. Trusts that are viable have to subsidise those that are not.