Billions will be wasted as long as the health service remains hyper-centralised and disconnected from local authorities
Watch the news each day and you might regard Britain’s NHS as a black, swirling pit into which ever vaster sums of money constantly vanish. All it does is answer back with screams of hospitals near collapse, queueing ambulances outside hospitals, year-long waiting lists, postponed tests and staffing crises. The chancellor, Rishi Sunak, obsessed with daily headlines, hurls billions of pounds at it, to no obvious effect.
Those who know the NHS all say the same. The NHS relies on the public thinking it wonderful, and as a result all it needs to do is demand money from the government. In 2007, the businessman Gerry Robinson made a celebrated documentary about trying to run an NHS hospital. At the end of a working day, the camera caught him getting into his car and collapsing into tears of frustration. The reason was not money. It was the opposition of the entire senior staff to any measure that might improve their performance or render their work more efficient.
Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
