THE NHS is under the most severe pressure.
Waiting lists stand at a record 7.2million.
PARishi Sunak doesn’t need to see a GP to know the NHS is in trouble[/caption]
GettyToday a second ambulance strike will take place which will inevitably add to the strain on the creaking health system[/caption]
Today, a second ambulance strike will take place which will inevitably add to the strain on the creaking health system.
Yet how did our politicians begin the week?
A row over whether the PM’s family has access to a private GP.
Does it really matter if Rishi Sunak has private healthcare?
His opponents think it does, saying the Prime Minister should tell the truth so we can judge for ourselves if he understands the pressures on the NHS.
It is daft that Sunak isn’t open, not least because doing so would have shut down this question months ago, rather than prolonging it.
But it also shows how ridiculous our political debate is.
For one thing, Prime Ministers are never going to be connected through their personal lives to reality.
WINTER CRISIS
They live behind enormous gates guarded by gun-toting police officers, are driven around in an entourage and have an entire room of switchboard operators managing their phone calls.
When Tony Blair left office he had to learn how to use a mobile phone because that technology had passed him by while in government.
Driving and remembering he needed to stop at a red light were new challenges too.
Prime Ministers can’t live normal lives.
Even if Sunak were to visit an NHS GP, he wouldn’t emerge from the appointment much more enlightened on the challenges facing the health service.
It’s a trap many of us fall into — we think that because we have been to a hospital at some point, we are in some way qualified to talk about the entire system.
Just like many of us still base our opinions about education on what we were taught at school, even when it was decades ago.
Unlike the rest of us armchair experts, though, Prime Ministers have access to all the data, the healthcare workers and officials they will ever need who can tell them what’s going on in the NHS.
The problem isn’t that Sunak may or may not have been paying to see a GP quickly.
It’s that he hasn’t been listening to the warnings of the people who really know the health service inside out.
The Government knew there would be a winter crisis in the NHS, even in the middle of summer.
In fact, ministers have known for years that the service and the people working in it have been running dangerously hot for too long.
Going on about out-of-touch politicians is much easier for all concerned than having a proper debate about the health of the NHS.
In its 75th anniversary year, it has never been in a worse position than it is now, and yet Sunak and his colleagues try to shut down questions about it by arguing that the health service is getting more money, even though its buildings are crumbling and it is understaffed.
The Prime Minister has also claimed that more cash is going to social care — which is true, but it still doesn’t touch the sides of that policy black hole.
Dodging proper debate about real reform — rather than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, as successive governments have done — is something all politicians are adept at.
Margaret Thatcher boasted about seeing private doctors.
She thought it was a good way that well-off people could free up capacity in the NHS for those who needed it.
But she wasn’t as iron-willed when it came to the NHS itself, constantly worrying about its power to harm her politically if the public didn’t think it was safe in her hands.
One of her former ministers, Ken Clarke, this week suggested charges to see GPs and have minor operations, but he is at a stage of his political career when he doesn’t need to worry about what voters make of him.
David Cameron made much of his love of and personal experiences in the NHS.
But he and his conveyor belt of successors catastrophically failed to reform social care, to the extent that people are stuck in hospital waiting for care packages.
SOCIAL CARE PROBLEM
This week, health secretary Steve Barclay announced £200million to try to stitch the system together a bit more and speed up discharges from hospital.
When he spoke about it in the Commons, he didn’t even bother to pretend that this was the big solution to the social care problem.
Neither did he suggest the Tories were prepared to reform social care.
The reason politicians keep dodging social care reform is that it will cost a lot of money and take a long time.
Voters don’t like hearing either of those things.
They also don’t like changes that will improve healthcare outcomes if they mean closing a local hospital, even if that hospital is very poor quality.
The Government can’t admit the NHS is in crisis because they fear taking the blame for that.
Sunak doesn’t need to go to a GP to know that failing to be honest about worrying symptoms of a life-threatening condition only makes things worse.
Until politicians are prepared to be honest about the NHS, it won’t get the medicine it needs.
GettyNHS waiting lists stand at a record 7.2million[/caption]
Simon Dawson / No10 Downing StreetSunak hasn’t been listening to the warnings of the people who really know the health service inside out[/caption] Read More