The island’s health minister has admitted Manx Care will not be able to make up ground after a reduction in elective surgery.

In one of his final acts as Minister for Health and Social Care before dramatically resigning, Lawrie Hooper took questions from members during Tuesday’s Tynwald sitting regarding the cuts proposed by Manx Care.

Earlier this month, Manx Care announced it was reducing the surgeries in a bid to save £220,000 as part of wider plans to slash the potential £16.8m overspend for this year.

The government had told Manx Care it would need to stay within its £347m budget. But this hard-line stance was clearly the last straw for Mr Hooper who was feeling the pressure in his role.

The board of Manx Care knew at the start of the financial year it needed to make £19m of cost improvement savings in order to balance its financial plan. However, chief executive Teresa Cope said it became clear the total that could achieved was more like £12m than £19m.

Just a couple of hours before announcing his resignation, Mr Hooper told Tynwald on Tuesday Manx Care would not be able to make up ground after reducing elective surgeries and said there would be knock-on consequences’ for patients.

He said: ‘The only way to recover is to speed up [elective surgeries] again. The reality is that will not happen.

‘The budget is not there. We cannot expect a recovery from this position without the allocation of more resources.’

Mr Hooper was responding to an urgent question from Arbory, Castletown and Malew MHK Tim Glover seeking a statement on Manx Care’s proposed cuts.

The minister said the savings made has not affected frontline services and says a number of savings have been made from efficiency changes and non-clinical areas.

But Tim Glover MHK said residents felt they were ‘paying more and getting less’ following a 2% personal income tax rise ringfenced for health.

Mr Hooper told Tynwald almost all of a £77m increase to the budget since Manx Care was established has been used for increased pay awards, rising drugs costs and improving staffing levels. He told members his department really needed an additional £12m in the budget.

Last week, Manx Care outlined a series of cost saving schemes which it hopes will reduce this year’s overspend by around £5m.

Chief executive Teresa Cope said there had been discussions with the Council of Ministers about how the remaining financial gap can be bridged.

As well as reducing elective surgeries, other cost-saving measures include keeping Ramsey’s Minor Injuries Unit closed at weekends, changing out-of-hours on-call arrangements in adult social work, additional scrutiny and sign-off for all bank and agency staff spend and a pause on all non-essential recruitment.

Ms Cope told a media briefing last week: ’Ultimately these actions should get us down to £8m.

‘No one wants to be halfway through the year having to do the almost salami slicing schemes which is ultimately just delaying something. But we have made that commitment to reduce our deficit and these are the schemes we feel we can implement with the least impact on frontline services.’

‘I want to reiterate that none of this is easy. Taking this level of savings out of any organisation is incredibly challenging.’