NHS Accountability

 

I read that health spending now accounts for a whopping 45% of overall government expenditure on goods and services.  As more and more borrowed money is lavished on the NHS it is dismal to learn that the number of operations being performed is lower than before Covid even though there are 13% more doctors, 11% more nurses and 10% more support staff.  How much more to turn the ship around or have we, perhaps, reached the point when we should be saying enough is enough? If we, the hapless patrons of such a broken system, were shareholders of the providing company we should be calling the Chief Executive to account.  However, as we know, healthcare provision is cunningly devised to that it is very difficult to pin anyone down, particularly over poor performance.  Of course, the Government department responsible for “the NHS” is Health and Social Care.  However, The Secretary of State, Steve Barclay today, can easily slope his shoulders because responsibility for allocating resources in the world’s second largest healthcare system is vested in the publicly unaccountable (and largely invisible) Amanda Pritchard.  Apparently, in a behind closed doors meeting with her executives on 13 October 2022, Amanda Pritchard described the health service’s financial situation as, “a f****** nightmare.” If half of Government spending is, “a f****** nightmare,” why is no one being called before Parliament to explain?  There are 650 elected Members of Parliament who have a vital responsibility to look out for how our taxes are spent.  But just whisper the abbreviation, "NHS," and the silence becomes deafening.