Broken but not beaten, is Lord Darzi’s verdict on the NHS in England. “My colleagues in the NHS are working harder than ever but our productivity has fallen,” he writes, concluding: “The NHS is in critical condition.” His report contains page after page of heart-stopping details that would shock the public to the core, if everyone didn’t already know that the NHS was in crisis. It’s why the Tories were chased away so decisively. The health of the NHS stands as a symbol for the health of the nation and the fitness of any government to rule.
But we are where we are. One purpose of Darzi’s report is, of course, to lay the blame squarely where it belongs: with the Conservatives’ unprecedented underfunding per capita for a rapidly rising, ageing and much sicker population. The public may long have forgotten the catastrophic effects of Andrew Lansley’s NHS re-disorganisation in 2012, but Darzi finds that the former health secretary’s “scorched earth” approach to health reform left deep scars.
