DURING the last election Theresa May famously told a nurse appealing for a pay rise there was ‘no magic money tree’. This at a time when trainee nurses are documented as relying on food banks in order to get by. Of course, such a plant as the magic money tree cannot exist in the real world – unless, that is, you want to lob a £1.5billion bung to the DUP in order to stay in power.

However, there is a species of money tree in Britain. It is the income generated from tax and national insurance payments which, ever since the Labour government of 1945 established the NHS, has nourished that wonderful institution. And its bounty has been available to all, free at the point of use and based on clinical need. Who among us have not been beneficiaries?

It is that very principle of universality, services available to everyone, rich or poor, wise or foolish, which makes the NHS so treasured. We have come to rely on it as we would a faithful friend, safe in the knowledge we will not be turned away at our hour of greatest need.

However, since November 2016 that principle has been abandoned in York for a growing number of our fellow citizens. To me it seems a scandal.

Cutbacks by Vale of York Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) mean that patients with a body-mass index (BMI) of more than 30 face delays in receiving non-emergency surgery for up to a year unless they reduce their BMI to less than 30 or lose ten per cent of their body weight.

Likewise, guidelines are in place delaying surgery for smokers for up to six months unless they stop smoking for at least two months.

Now many people will think that only fair. The argument runs that obesity is a lifestyle choice, as is smoking, and that both are known to increase a wide range of health risks. Why should those not suffering from those problems have to pay for those that do?

Questions which bring us back to the NHS money tree. And very wizened it is looking after seven years of austerity, weakened by privatisation and parasites like grossly-inflated PFI contracts.

Essentially, York NHS is hugely underfunded. Back in August predictions by health chiefs estimated budget shortfalls would trigger cuts of £9.7m in the Vale of York and £3.8m in Scarborough and Ryedale on top of existing, euphemistically-named, ‘efficiency savings’ already running into tens of millions of pounds.

Little surprise then that York Teaching Hospital NHS Trust has failed to reach national targets on a key range of indicators, such as A&E waiting times, cancer care and planned operations and care.

All of which is used to justify denying or delaying crucial operations to patients who are clinically obese or smokers.

I would call this policy not only cruel (we can be sure such people feel pain just as badly as slim non-smokers) but irrational and arbitrary.

Let’s examine the argument that people whose lifestyle choices contribute to their condition should have their healthcare rationed. By that logic here are a few people who should be denied treatment: long-distance runners who develop knee injuries, Sunday league footballers who break a limb, anyone who sustains injuries in a car crash that is arguably their fault.

The list is potentially endless. What about someone in the building trade who suffers an industrial injury, such as falling off scaffolding? They knew that building as an occupation carries risks. They wilfully persisted in following that hazardous profession. Should they be denied access to health care, too?

Of course such nonsense has nothing to do with logic or fairness. Like so many measures foisted upon the long suffering population of this country since the banking crash of 2008, it is all about money. And, in particular, about allowing corporations and the very wealthy to evade fair taxation levels.

It is high time ordinary people benefited from the money tree they fund through their taxes. That means all of us, whether trim or obese, smoker or pure-lunged, simply because we are all fragile human beings who sometimes need tender loving care.