IN the political battle over the National Health Service, the main weapon is the statistic.

Today the Intensive Care Society (ICS) launched a barrage of figures at the Government to back their case that critical hospital care is underfunded. Britain has fewer intensive care beds than other Western European nations, it said.

Health Secretary John Reid hit back with some numbers of his own: an extra £299 million spent on critical care in the last three years; an increase of a third in the number of critical care beds.

For the dangerously ill patient and their family, such statistics are irrelevant, of course. Their only priority is that top quality health care is available locally and immediately.

The ICS fears that cannot be guaranteed. Its president said today that "a bed crisis this winter is inevitable".

Such talk was dismissed as scaremongering by Dr Reid. That is a very unhelpful response.

The NHS winter beds crisis has become an annual event. Although the extra demand for hospital beds in the colder months is as predictable as Christmas, the health service always struggles to cope. So the ICS prognosis is hardly going to create public panic, rather a resigned shrug of recognition.

And Dr Reid should understand that patients are more likely to trust doctors than politicians when it comes to an assessment of frontline care.

A more appropriate response from Dr Reid would see him meet with ICS representatives and address their concerns.

This is an opportunity for the health secretary to take action to prevent horror stories about critically ill patients ferried about in ambulances desperately seeking a bed. Dr Reid would be well advised to stop firing off statistics and take it.

Updated: 10:13 Wednesday, November 26, 2003