Even though the human cost of a cruel policy has been confirmed, expect another turn of the screw next week
Deaths are what can be counted most easily – bodies can’t be hidden from the statisticians or denied by those responsible for the figures. It was predictable, and predicted, that many more would die when the government of David Cameron, George Osborne and Nick Clegg applied a brutal tourniquet to public spending in 2010. Warnings at the time were shrugged off as shroud-waving and scaremongering.
But new research from University of York’s renowned Centre For Health Economics only confirms the inevitable consequence: an extra 57,550 people in England died in the five years from 2010, a level of deaths beyond the statistically normal. Life expectancy improvement slowed, which was directly “attributable to spending constraints in the healthcare and social care sectors”, according to lead researcher Prof Karl Claxton.
Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
