London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Thursday, Oct 09, 2025

Only one logical solution to stop our NHS perma-crisis

Only one logical solution to stop our NHS perma-crisis

Latest London news, business, sport, showbiz and entertainment from the London Evening Standard.
Like a grotesque mirror image of Advent, the NHS “winter crisis” has become an annual fixture — a painful reminder of the limitations of the health service, a litany of awful anecdotes and a ritual political controversy.

This year’s difficulties, however, are different. The overflowing morgues, the lengthening queues of ambulances, the A&E patient forced to wait 99 hours at Swindon’s Great Western Hospital, the Royal College of Emergency Medicine warning that between 300 and 500 people are dying every week because of delays in urgent and emergency care — this is a system not only creaking at the joints but close to implosion.

Specifically, we are witnessing the long tail of Covid converging with a fresh spike in cases of the illness itself. During the pandemic, many with emerging conditions, especially cardiac and ischemic problems, stayed away from hospital, and now require more intensive treatment. Meanwhile, in the week before December 19, 7,158 patients were admitted with coronavirus — an increase of 36 per cent in only seven days.

Covid and flu cases presently account for 13,000 of the NHS’s 95,000 hospital beds. And lurking in the background is a justified anxiety about fresh variants arriving on these shores. China’s abrupt lifting of its “zero-Covid” strategy, poorly-vaccinated population and consequently low levels of popular immunity mean that new strains of the virus are all but certain to emerge (and may already have done so). In the north-east of the US, a powerful new strain of omicron, XBB.1.5, is already taking hold.

Compounding these epidemiological pressures, of course, is the wave of industrial action that is set to continue this month. The Royal College of Nursing has announced further strikes on January 18 and 19, while ambulance workers at five NHS trusts in England will take action on the 11th and 23rd.

Confronted with this dismal vista, ministers point out that, thanks to Jeremy Hunt’s Autumn Statement, cash spending on NHS England will increase by £3.3 billion in the next two years. The extra money is welcome, but it is a sticking-plaster applied to a patient in need of long-term, transformative care.

As an ecosystem, the NHS is simply no longer functioning. Primary care is in meltdown as face-to-face appointments — the essence of the whole service — dwindle fast. Meanwhile, the inadequacy of social care provision means that far too many people stay in hospital longer than they need to — an estimated 12,000 medically-fit patients are stuck in hospital awaiting discharge.

What this amounts to is not only a political challenge — that will always be true of the NHS — but a national moral dilemma. What sort of health service do we really want? What are the limits of our collective sense of solidarity? Since its foundation in 1948, the demographic, scientific and social context in which the NHS nestles has changed beyond recognition. The question is: what are we prepared to do about it? Certainly, the over-centralised bureaucracy of the system can be radically reformed.

The use of information technology in the NHS remains something of a joke in Whitehall and beyond. There are always efficiencies to be squeezed out of a structure that employs 1.2 million full-time staff in England alone.

Inescapably, however, the overhaul that the system needs is going to require a huge and sustainable increase in funding. During the pandemic there was much talk of adding spare capacity — moving from “just in time” to “just in case”; a preventive health strategy worthy of the name; pay structures that retained staff and prevented the ludicrous expense of depending upon private agency staff; mental health services that were known for more than their waiting lists and social care that was not a national disgrace.

For the most part, this talk has subsided, principally because to continue such conversations would compel a general recognition that, if we want a health service of this sort, we are going to have to start paying wealth taxes.

It is as stark a choice as that. Until, as a society, we recognise that our fixed assets and capital gains are the only logical source of the scale of funding required, nothing much will change.

This is not a welcome choice, but it is the one that really counts. And it is a choice. We can recognise what needs to be done and get on with it. Or we can read the increasingly dire headlines every winter — and accept the consequences of our collective decision.
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
France: Less Than a Month After His Appointment, the New French Prime Minister Resigns
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that Hungary will not adopt the euro because the European Union is falling apart.
Sarah Mullally Becomes First Woman Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury
Mayor in western Germany in intensive care after stabbing
Australian government pays Deloitte nearly half a million dollars for a report built on fabricated quotes, fake citations, and AI-generated nonsense.
US Prosecutors Gained Legal Approval to Hack Telegram Servers
Macron Faces Intensifying Pressure to Resign or Trigger New Elections Amid France’s Political Turmoil
Standard Chartered Names Roberto Hoornweg as Sole Head of Corporate & Investment Banking
UK Asylum Housing Firm Faces Backlash Over £187 Million Profits and Poor Living Conditions
UK Police Crack Major Gang in Smuggling of up to 40,000 Stolen Phones to China
BYD’s UK Sales Soar Nearly Nine-Fold, Making Britain Its Biggest Market Outside China
Trump Proposes Farm Bailout from Tariff Revenues Amid Backlash from Other Industries
FIFA Accuses Malaysia of Forging Citizenship Documents, Suspends Seven Footballers
Latvia to Bar Tourist and Occasional Buses to Russia and Belarus Until 2026
A Dollar Coin Featuring Trump’s Portrait Expected to Be Issued Next Year
Australia Orders X to Block Murder Videos, Citing Online Safety and Public Exposure
Three Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine for Discovery of Immune Self-Tolerance Mechanism
OpenAI and AMD Forge Landmark AI-Chip Alliance with Equity Option
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
×