Beware the NHS’s new zero-tolerance drive

‘A key to the NHS successes of the 2000s was a decade’s annual real increases in NHS expenditure of 5%.’ Photograph: Alamy

Victor Adebowale, the cross-bench peer, raised two concerns about the NHS (Report, 26 December). First, that it risks paralysis while it waits for Wes Streeting’s 10-year plan for reform. Second, long waiting times this year, compared with a similar period in 2009, for diagnostic scans and elective care, and in A&E.

My concern is not that the NHS is paralysed while waiting for the 10-year plan, but that its intentions have been overtaken by the package of NHS reforms of zero tolerance for failure announced on 13 November by the Department of Health and Social Care. That package looks like the regimes of the 2000s: sacking persistently failing managers, sending turnaround teams into struggling hospitals, rewarding the best performers with autonomy, and aiming to reduce waiting times from 18 months to 18 weeks.