Boris Johnson must follow through on his Blairite commitment to the NHS

For the second time in this pandemic, the focus of government policy is to avoid the National Health Service being overwhelmed. We did not find out what that meant in April, and let us hope we do not find out this time either, although the number of coronavirus patients in hospital and the number of deaths are markedly higher now than they were then. 

But we already know that huge damage has been done to NHS capacity, and that its ability to do anything but treat the most urgent and serious illness is now severely curtailed. Shaun Lintern, our award-winning health correspondent, reported yesterday that record numbers are now waiting for treatment. By the end of November, 192,000 people had been waiting for more than a year for routine operations, with the total NHS waiting list standing at 4.5 million, which is about one in 12 of the population of England. 

This is a measure of the extent to which the NHS has been set back, just as it seemed, a year ago, that it was at last about to start to receive significant extra funding after a decade of stringency. 

The Labour Party is entitled to say that it left the health service in good condition in 2010, with maximum waiting times brought down to 18 weeks and patient satisfaction at record levels. The Conservative (and Liberal Democrat) governments protected funding in real terms, but this meant it failed to keep up with rising demand, including from a growing population. It was only late in Theresa May’s premiership that more money was promised – she had been goaded by the Vote Leave slogan calling for the £350m a week that was not sent to the EU to be spent on the NHS. 

Boris Johnson felt bound to follow through on that promise and made specific pledges in his 2019 manifesto to deliver 50,000 more nurses, 6,000 more general practitioners and 50 million extra general practice appointments a year. All those numbers have been thrown awry by coronavirus, but when the vaccines kick in they must be looked at again. 

This government needs Tony Blair levels of spending, reform and commitment to clear the backlog, and to restore the NHS not just to where it was but, by the end of this parliament, to something like the position it was in in 2010. For that reason, Mr Johnson’s appointment of Sir Michael Barber, the former head of Mr Blair’s delivery unit, to conduct a “rapid review of government delivery to ensure it remains focused, effective and efficient” is extremely welcome. 

Sir Michael knows better than anyone how to get the best out of public services. But this must be an effort of the whole government and indeed of the whole nation. This Conservative government must not make the mistake made by David Cameron, Nick Clegg and George Osborne of thinking that merely maintaining NHS funding in real terms is enough, as it seeks to restore a semblance of normality to the public finances. 

The NHS will need substantial extra resources for years to come, and they will have to come from not devoting those resources to other things. Hard choices will have to be made, but the prime minister keeps repeating the Blairite phrase about “the people’s priorities”, and the restoration of the NHS is at the top of the list.