The new government’s policy to the NHS so far looks like the old one’s. Tell them getting waiting lists down is the priority, and then give them more money to do so.
There are to be new hospitals on capital account. Boris promised that but despite record funding little was completed and a lot was not started.What will be the change to get to construction contracts faster?
There is to be £1.5 bn of extra equipment. There always is a substantial equipment budget. A bit more might remove a few bottlenecks as people wait for tests.
The obvious think lacking is hospital beds or surgery small operations capacity. Of course beds need staffing, but the NHS is always recruiting extra staff.
There is some talk of the NHS making more use of private medical capacity as Blair and Milburn started. It is certainly a good idea to explore if the private sector could for example tackle a lot of cataract removals or knee joint repairs in dedicated facilities contracted to perform NHS work to a high standard. The patient would still be treated free.
There are some obvious money saving things to do to help bridge the gaps. Foreign visitors should pay for any use they need to make of the NHS, though that often does not happen.
The NHS should accept returns of equipment suitable after cleaning for reuse, like crutches and frames. It should get better at controlling stocks and reducing wastage of foods and medicines.
October 30, 2024
Good morning.
And the main reason for that is . . . . . . MASS IMMIGRATION. Quelle surprise !
As I have said many, many times before, BEFORE they get their visa’s they must first take out medical insurance with a BRITISH BASED insurance company. Those countries that ‘game the system’ the most will have to pay higer premiums and this will act as a form of disincentive. Women who are pregnant or very old people needing much care will simply not get the insurance and therefore no visa. No visa, no entry. It is a simple system and a very effective system. Plus we get to make a bit of money from foreign vistors on the side 😉
October 30, 2024
I agree. In Spain you can’t get residency without getting private medical insurance. Our system is far too lax. The NHS should also tighten up on Irish citizens who pretend to live in the UK to gain access to free treatment.
October 30, 2024
+1
October 30, 2024
Same old same old. 40% less nurses in training since 2010. Why is that. It’s because they’d rather conscript poorly educated foreign staff whilst insisting uk staff must have degrees
How about not charging fees for training uk nurses for starters.
Streeting bleating on about lack of resources when in actual fact the NHS has enjoyed mega funding only to see productivity slip like most of the public services.
No mention if the 70% non medical staff, many who could be culled to release more money for front line services.
14 years in opposition and no tangible plan
October 30, 2024
A visa to the UK for more than 6 months already has a mandatory ‘health insurance’ payment, paid on application for the visa.
October 30, 2024
Quite so. Wokingham’s nearest main hospital, the Royal Berkshire hospital, serves a Wokingham and Reading Borough population that grew by 75,000 between the two recent censuses (not to mention West Berkshire and probably some of South Oxfordshire). I wonder what extra resources it was given between 2011-2021 to cope with the extra patient numbers.
October 30, 2024
The NHS has become a sacred cow. Untouchable. Chewing through cash by the billion. There is no one person or political party that appears to have a clue what to do with the monstrous beast. Yesterday Andrew Neill posted a clip of his discussion with two experts on the NHS. One pointed out it was designed in the 1940s for the conditions in the 1940s and needs a fundamental rethink. But who has the capacity, and more importantly, the political will to create and implement a more relevant health system for the UK? There is no one. It was pointed out that no other country follows the UK model.
October 30, 2024
As a priority, they need to sort out the ambulances. It is unacceptable that, like my aunt and mother-in-law, they had to wait 12 hours and 6 hours, respectively, lying on the floor with a broken hip, waiting for an ambulance. It is even more galling that we see a line of ambulances ready and waiting for the new arrivals on the south coast. This is no way to treat our elderly. You wouldn’t treat a dog this badly. Disgusting!!
October 30, 2024
They’ve been using private hospitals for years to reduce waiting lists. My husband is lucky enough to always get NHS treatment in the local private hospital. What the NHS needs to do is tackle the high levels of sick leave amongst its staff.
October 30, 2024
Police and Cooper Balls on again about “too early to speculate”. Do they know what speculate means? It is what you do in the absence of full information or delays and lies from the powers that be. I shall speculate as much as I want to, this especially given Kiers sick two tier policing and justice system and misinformation we suffer under.
Well said Allison Pearson in the Telegraph today.
“We deserve to know the full truth about the Southport massacre”
October 30, 2024
Good morning, Sir John –
No matter how much money is pumped into the NHS – it will never be sufficient, not as long as the attitude of the people changes, to taking responsibility for their own health and, more importantly, not as long as the attitude of the government + attached Media insists on everyone being so infantilised that even sticking a plaster on a scraped knee needs medical supervision while said MSM produce daily ‘health advice’, combined with ‘news’ of the latest shocking disease bound to kill us all.
October 30, 2024
Sir John,
As I have said before…. The NHS has become too politisised over the years for any government to have a simple and honest discussion about it and it’s future.
We need that debate to discuss exactly what we want or need the NHS to be.
I think everyone can agree we need the emergency side of it and the ambulance side of it.
We need it to manage acute and chronic serious conditions.
Maybe some of the less necessary procedures should attract a patient monetary contribution. What may these less necessary procedures be I hear you ask… I would suggest IVF, tattoo removal, gender reassignment operations etc. There must be many other areas that aren’t necessary and could be thought about.
I think we need an honest and open cross party debate about the future of the NHS and then, once completed and implemented, keep the politicians out of it.
October 30, 2024
Did anyone seriously think that Keir-Ching! and his bunch of Student Union Marxists were going to actually reform the NHS? This is the group of authoritarian lefties who would have locked us down for even longer and harder than Johnson and the Quad did in order to “save their beloved NHS.”
They will just throw more money down the bottomless pit and, since the borders are still wide open and hundreds of thousands are flooding in every year, it will achieve absolutely nothing. The Junior Doctors have the massive pay rise they demanded (with no efficiency reforms whatsoever) and the Unions will prevent any genuine reform from taking place.
We need to move towards an insurance-based system that blocks health tourists from exploiting British taxpayers; disincentivises people from making poor lifestyle choices and deters the worried well from clogging up their GP surgeries or A & E.
No branch of the Westminster Uni-Party is prepared to do what’s necessary.
October 30, 2024
Cutting back on the unnecessary bureaucracy and posts that add no value is necessary. Unfortunately Labour is even less likely to do this than the Conservatives.
October 30, 2024
The DT says the percentage of high earners, 1.5x median wage, dropped by 4% in 4 years to 22%.
In the UK 20% pay 80% of the income and NI tax and 10% pay 60%.
If this continues in 10 years the % high earners will drop to 12%. This implies something like 40% of income and NI tax revenue will go in 10 years. This calculation is based on 5% of the top 10% and 5% of the 10-20% leaving. The only solution will be a massive drop in Government spending.
Ontop of this you have millions of migrants coming into the country who cost £500,000 each if they live to 80, according to the OBR.
It’s going to get very ugly very quickly.
Within the space of 2 Governments it will become unmanageable. It’s going to get very ugly. We are looking at a pre war German style collapse.
October 30, 2024
The NHS is a financial black hole! Is the Health minister only responsible for the English NHS?
October 30, 2024
The NHS is overwhelmed with layer upon layer of middle management. With a headcount of ~1.35 million, only 150,000 are doctors and consultants. There are about 300,000 directly employed nurses, radiographers, lab people etc with another 100,000 working for agencies. Total clinical staff is about 550,000, or roughly 40% The other 60% are senior management and admin!
No wonder the waiting lists are so long. Streeting should have a one-off cull of the dead wood, freeing up whole hospital floors for new wards. The NHS is notorious for office empire building. Just throwing more money at this monolithic organisation will achieve little more than more admin staff
October 30, 2024
Sir JR wins undertstatement of the year:
“There are some obvious money saving things to do to help bridge the gaps. Foreign visitors should pay for any use they need to make of the NHS, though that often does not happen”
People come to England with the sole intention of getting free treatment. It’s been happening for decades.
As said by ‘Mark B’ If you are coming here legally, you should provide for your own healthcare via insurance. After paying in to the system for a set term (say 5 years) NHS entitlement could be granted.
If you come here illegally you should have NO NHS entitlement.
P.S. When my son injured his ankle, he was given aluminium sticks to aid him walking. When he was better, I took the sticks back to the hospital. Only to be told ‘we don’t want them thanks !!!!
We jumped through hoops trying to find somewhere that did want them.
October 30, 2024
Free at the point of use is too open to abuse.
Grant based funding does not direct funding to where is is most productive.
Charge a small amount per appointment (refundable to the old or infirm is they turn up).
Pay per procedure or appointment carried out rather than by block grant funding. Improvements will follow the productivity.
October 30, 2024
Whatever government does, it does badly and expensively. What the NHS needs is slimming down. Relieve it of the obligation to treat lifestyle diseases, introduce a workplace health insurance scheme so employees can opt out of the NHS with tax incentives to cover most of the cost.