RUTH SUNDERLAND: Chancellors sour medicine over NHS

Rachel Reeves’ leftist budget was supposed to stabilize the economy, but to the surprise of almost no one, it has done nothing of the sort.

Their mantra of “invest, invest, invest” actually translates to “borrow, borrow, borrow.” Much of their headlong rush to spend and borrow to increase the size of the State is aimed at pumping money into the gaping maw of an unreformed NHS.

As anyone who has had the misfortune of needing medical treatment recently will know, it is deeply flawed despite the best efforts of many brave employees.

More money alone will not solve the problems; It will simply make taxpayers even poorer and the NHS will remain a disaster. There will be a £22.6 billion increase in the daily health budget and a £3.1 billion increase in the capital budget over this year and next.

These huge sums of money are not tied to any performance targets. The blame, naturally, falls on the supposedly evil Tories and what Reeves calls their “austere” approach to the NHS.

Of course, the health service is still recovering from the strains imposed on it by the pandemic, a global pestilence that cannot plausibly be attributed to the Conservative Party.

The Government will publish a ten-year plan for the NHS in spring, setting out a plan for a shift “from hospitals to the community”, a push towards digital and a big push towards preventive health measures. These are all sensible directions of travel, but extremely difficult to execute.

And the NHS’s biggest problem is not a lack of money, but the strange way in which a dysfunctional and wasteful institution has become an object of national worship.

Any criticism is considered heresy. The “free in time of need” approach should not mean behaving towards patients as if we were poor and helpless. However, we are supposed to be grateful for any care we receive, no matter how inadequate.

Demands on the NHS will only multiply due to an aging population and the rise in long-term illnesses post-Covid.

There are 2.8 million people of working age who say they cannot do a job due to chronic health problems, a phenomenon peculiar to these islands – other nations have seen their numbers fall as Covid recedes.

The Budget contained a £240m package aimed at “helping” the sick and disabled into the workforce and a White Paper on “Get Britain Working” is in preparation. But behind these fine words, the reality is that, for Labour, the NHS is not just about patients.

The Government is equally, if not more concerned, about the interests of its 1.7 million workers, many of whom are unionized.

NHS staff should be well paid and pensioned, but the profit-making part of the economy is being taxed and private sector employees are treated with contempt.

Anyone who has saved to be able to pay for private care in the event of a medical emergency is so despised by the Labor Party that they are now considered non-working.

Labor seems to think that the UK should consist of a health service with an added nation.

Individuals and businesses should not be blatantly bled dry of tax revenue, only to find that when they need the NHS, they are let down.

The whole point of the NHS is that it is here to serve all of us, not the other way around.