Prof Anne Marie Rafferty, Dr Ross Martin and Mandhir Uppal respond to Simon Jenkins’ article about the state of the health service
Simon Jenkins suggests putting the NHS on a wartime footing (This NHS crisis is historic – a war footing is the only way to deal with it, 2 January). I’d say yes to that if it were to result in something similar to the hikes in salaries for nurses during the second world war under the Rushcliffe Committee.
But I reject Jenkins’ big hypothetical “if this is like the pandemic of 2020 then we should treat it as such. And perhaps this time we might learn from our mistakes”. The tragic fact is we have had ample time to learn from our mistakes, but instead of fixing things the government has been consumed by its own self-combustive psychodramas, to the detriment of its public duty.
