SORRY. For a moment there I came over all faint. I think I was about to say I agreed with Alan Milburn. It's not the kind of thing you admit to lightly.

For some reason, just the sound of the well-groomed New Labour health secretary's smarmy voice is enough to make me sweat and brings to mind an unwanted image of him standing in front of a mirror in a scented bathroom combing Brylcreem into his hair.

It is not a pretty image - and it tends to get in the way of actually listening to anything he says. Not that that matters much. Like most politicians, I have never suffered the delusion you actually have to listen to anybody before you decide they're wrong.

But for a moment - only a moment, mind - I was tempted to think his latest wheeze made sense.

It was his proposal to fine local councils £225 a day for every elderly patient left languishing unnecessarily in hospital that prompted this mini crisis. Because let's face it, why shouldn't we expect local councils to take responsibility for looking after some of the most frail and vulnerable people in our society.

There is something particularly distasteful about a system which views elderly people - people who all their lives have worked, laughed, loved, paid their taxes, brought up their children and struggled to hand on to us a society worth living in - simply as inconveniences.

Yet that's just how many local councils apparently do see them.

Hospitals are no places to call home. The fact so many elderly people are forced to stay there week after week, month after month, for no better reason than that they are unable to look after themselves and their local council can't or won't find a proper home for them, is little short of scandalous.

You can see why councils think bed-blocking is such a good wheeze. After all, while an elderly person is in hospital it is the health authority that picks up the tab for their care, not the council. You can almost see our elected local leaders rubbing their hands with glee: "Hey, guys, let's dump a few more old geezers in hospital and we'll be able to cut spending even more. That way won't have to ask voters to pay so much council tax, and we're bound to get in again come the next election."

So yeah, make 'em pay, I thought. Good on you, Alan.

And then, with a feeling of shame, I came to my senses and realised belatedly that I, too, had fallen victim to New Labour spin.

Because Alan Milburn's idea, when you think about it, is simply another attempt to deflect blame away from central government, where the respon-sibility for bed-blocking really lies, and on to those hapless, helpless and doubtless well-intentioned people in local government.

Yes, it's a scandal that councils allow the elderly to languish in hospital beds because they won't pay for them to go into proper homes. But it's the Government that's to blame for not funding local councils properly in the first place.

And which organisation has been doing its level best to drive private elderly people's homes out of business? The Government, of course, by its idiot insistence on impossible standards and its policies designed to drive up property prices so much that an old people's home is worth more as a building plot than an old people's home.

So sorry, Alan. Nice try, but you're rumbled, son.

Instead of fining local councils £225 per elderly person stuck in a hospital bed, why don't you try giving them the same amount so they can afford to pay for them to go into proper care instead?

- In Chris Titley's absense, his column this week was written by Stephen Lewis

Updated: 11:10 Wednesday, May 08, 2002