The mantra for much of the last two years has been “protect the NHS”, a curious reversal of the traditional relationship between patients and the health service.
Yet, with the pandemic now effectively over, the British public is still expected to make sacrifices. Earlier this month, hospitals in the South West of England asked people not to undertake DIY, for fear that they might end up in an overburdened A&E, while in Dorset they were told to “stop and think” if they really needed treatment.
This perverse mentality reached its apogee in the decision to increase National Insurance Contributions, in an egregious breach of the Tory manifesto, to bail the health service out of its post-Covid mess. That extra money will supposedly eventually be transferred to solving that other great crisis of state, social care. Sceptics may be forgiven for waiting to see such a move before believing it will happen. It appears more likely that when the latest cash infusion fails to improve performance sufficiently, taxpayers will be asked to cough up again, ratcheting Britain in an ever-more socialistic direction.
It is a reflection of the ideological confusion in this Conservative government that it seems to have adopted the Brownian logic that the effectiveness of public services can only be measured in how much money they are given and not in such old-fashioned ideas as efficiency and outcomes. The stark truth is that the NHS is failing to meet the most basic of expectations. There are now six million people on waiting lists – almost a tenth of the entire population – and ambulances can take hours to reach patients without immediately life-threatening conditions.
Moreover, the NHS is reeling from yet another astonishingly awful scandal. Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, has ordered a new inquiry into failings in maternity care at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust following the deaths of 30 babies and brain damage to a further 46. It comes just a month after the Ockenden report found that the deaths of 200 babies and nine mothers at the Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust were preventable.
The Left and Britain’s cultural elites would have us believe that the NHS is the new, secular national religion. Yet slavish adherence to that idea has left Britain with an unaffordable, failing health service. The West is replete with much better systems that are not funded as the NHS is, yet our leaders still pay homage to the idea that ours is the envy of the world.
If now is not the time to consider radical reform, including funding, when will it ever be? Don’t the Tories see the trap they have fallen into, and for which they will eventually pay a steep electoral price? The answer cannot be yet more budget-balancing on the backs of struggling taxpayers.
