Sajid Javid calls for royal commission to compare healthcare abroad to ‘frozen’ NHS

The NHS is “frozen in time” and has left Britons sicker than those in many other western countries, Sajid Javid has warned.

The former health secretary is calling for a royal commission into the health service, to provide a “dispassionate and honest” assessment of how it can be reformed.

Mr Javid said a public inquiry should look at models of care in other countries and report back within a year to provide a “collective mandate” for reform.

And he claimed that both the Conservatives and Labour privately concede that the NHS is “unsustainable” and cannot cope with surging levels of demand despite record levels of funding.

Ahead of the 75th anniversary of the NHS on Wednesday, Mr Javid said: “No universal healthcare system is perfect, but when you compare health outcomes in the UK with similar countries, it is clear that for decades we have fallen short across successive governments.”

He blamed “short-term thinking” by the Conservatives and Labour caused by the “politicisation” of the service. And he blasted the ongoing use of fax machines and pagers by doctors and nurses, saying other countries have embraced new technologies “much more quickly” than Britain.

“There are some hospitals that are still entirely paper-based, and I think you'd be hard pressed to find that anywhere else in a comparable country in Europe,” Mr Javid said.

Writing in The Times, Mr Javid said the UK faces worse health outcomes than comparable countries as a “direct consequence” of how the NHS is set up.

Highlighting Britain’s ageing population and the lingering impact of the pandemic, Mr Javid said the supply of healthcare will continue to be outstripped by soaring demand.

“All of this is at a time of record funding for the NHS,” he wrote.

“In 2000, the health budget accounted for 27 per cent of day-to-day UK public spending; next year it will hit 44 per cent, larger than the GDP of Greece.

The backbench MP, who served as health secretary under Boris Johnson, said “entire British state is on the verge of becoming a subsidiary of the NHS”,

Mr Javid said: “It’s a direct consequence of how the NHS is still structured. Since it was established in 1948, the world has significantly changed — yet much of the institution remains frozen in time.”

And he said: “Now is the time for the national interest to come to the fore with a collective mandate for reform.

“To make sure the NHS is here in another 75 years, we need a royal commission.”

An inquiry should consider ideas such as a greater focus on preventing illness, rather than treating it, Mr Javid said.

He told Times Radio: “ The NHS is very much, think of it as a national hospital service, it looks after you when you have become ill.

“There is a lot more than can be done as a country on trying to prevent that in the first place or slow it down.

“We know what the biggest killers are out there, it is obesity, smoking, alcohol and drug addiction. Other countries have a much broader joined up approach to prevention.”

And Mr Javid called for the UK to consider different models used by countries including Germany, which has a social insurance scheme, or Denmark which relies on fewer but larger so-called mega hospitals.

“I am not saying each one of these is necessarily the answer for us, but we do need to look at why other countries are using different models and the outcomes that brings,” he added.

His intervention comes a week after a report showed the NHS is performing “substantially less well” than similar countries on life expectancy and other health outcomes.

The King’s Fund study said the UK health system is lagging behind peers on crucial measures, including avoidable mortality – deaths that could have been avoided with better primary care.

Another damning finding from the report was that Britain has substantially fewer key physical resources than many of its peers, including MRI scanners and hospital beds.

The UK had the fourth and second-highest rates of preventable and treatable mortality in 2019 among the 19 health systems in the report, with 119 deaths and 69 deaths per 100,000 people respectively.

And it suggested that British policy makers should “pick out specific areas of learning and interesting practice” from other health systems, rather than attempt an entire reset.

And it came as Dr Phil Banfield, chairman of council at the British Medical Association, warned the NHS is “collapsing” and doctors are being forced to apologise to their patients because they cannot provide adequate care.