Drain on Resources.

During 2020 and 2021, the focus of the NHS was all on one thing. Cancer, heart and many other patients were of secondary importance to those suffering from one particular ailment. Now, it’s all about catching up with routine operations missed during the two years of madness, yet ambulances are backed up outside, with patients dying in the back. It seems everyone knows a story where things went wrong.

So, people are entitled to ask where their money is going. Funding for NHS health care in England comes from the Department for Health and Social Care’s budget. This spending in England alone was £190.3 billion in 2021/22. The majority of the Department’s spending (£136.1 billion in 2021/22) went straight to NHS England for spending on health services.

It's a truly eye-watering amount. The plan is that it drops during 2022/23 to a mere £173bn as the extra spending on the plague is phased out, though during a trip to Wolverhampton yesterday, revealed a large shop unit still in use as a jab centre. The profligate spending of taxpayers’ money isn’t over yet.

All of this might be tolerated if the NHS was the world-beating service we have been told it is. But it is far from it. The admission came yesterday, as the Health Secretary, Sayid Javid, admitted in a cabinet meeting. The Prime Minister’s spokesman said afterwards, “The health and social care secretary updated Cabinet on the scale of the challenge post-pandemic, saying we had a Blockbuster healthcare system in the age of Netflix.

“He said it was no longer simply an option to stick to the status quo." Welcome to the real world.

"The NHS is absolutely fantastic, we all rely on it, but much of how it's set up is still very much 1948, we need to be thinking about 2048 and how we get from here to the needs of the British population when it comes to health in 2048," Mr Javid later explained to MPs.

He finally came into line with what this party have been saying for a long, long time. Whilst we recognise there are excellent staff within it, to call it an "organisation" is a misnomer. Mr Javid also said he would be looking for £4.5bn in productivity savings, with no new money available for any reorganisation, but the future looks bleak when the top recommendation from a review into bullying in the service was action to improve equality, diversity and inclusion.

I am not sure any more Diversity Officers are going to achieve improved productivity. Mr Javid wants to start axing them. He has a job on his hands.

Martin Day – Party Secretary