Amid yet another winter crisis for the NHS, which this year has led to the cancellation of all non-urgent surgeries for a month, several newspapers have come out in support of an NHS Royal Commission.
The Telegraph highlighted that while the cancellations were unusual, the NHS is rarely not in crisis. Ever since it’s foundation in 1948 “there have been sporadic emergencies to which successive governments have responded with structural reforms or more money or both…yet the service continues to struggle.”
The Sun leader urged political parties to come together to address the issue, stating “Jeremy Corbyn will only ever use it as a weapon. But more serious Labour voices should join a cross-party effort to rethink the extent of care the NHS provides and how it is structured and paid for.”
And Nick Timothy, former Joint Downing Street Chief of Staff, wrote a piece for The Telegraph in which he criticises Lansley reforms from “creating bureaucracy and destroying accountability” and calls for a “cross-party” response.
“An NHS Royal Commission – From fighting fires to lasting settlement”, written by Maurice Saatchi and published by the Centre for Policy Studies, called for exactly that.
- The Telegraph piece, “The perpetual crisis in the NHS will not be remedied without deep reform”, can be read here (£)
- Nick Timothy’s piece, “The Coalition’s NHS reforms have provded disastrous. We need a Royal commission to fix them”, for The Telegraph can be read here (£)
- The Sun’s piece, “Britain must rethink how our crisis-ridden NHS is run – and politicians from all sides need to fix it”, can be read here
Date Added: Thursday 4th January 2018
