MANY will have little sympathy with Labour’s contention that Oxford’s NHS is “rationing” hip surgery for smokers and the obese.

County health bosses say patients have to stop smoking or lose weight so their procedure can be clinically safe.

Some will say people who suffer health problems of their own making should not even be entitled to NHS treatment.

And others will cynically say money, not medical need, is behind the rules.

But people in glass houses should not throw stones.

Labour presided over years of headlines about the “postcode lottery”.

Local managers were expected to take decisions on who should get cash – leading to a free-for-all for treatments from IVF to cancer drugs.

As county bosses struggled keep up with expensive new treatments and rising demands from an ageing population, something had to give.

And don’t expect much to change.

The Coalition’s major shake-up of the NHS is supposed to make decision-making even more local, putting more cash in the hands of family doctors instead of managers. But with the squeeze on public spending, don’t expect the rationing debate to go away.