Lord Saatchi, a leading Parliamentarian and health campaigner, calls for the creation of the Royal Commission into the future of the National Health Service in a new report published by the Centre for Policy Studies on Sunday February 19 2017.
As the country emerges from another winter NHS crisis – and with no agreement over the depth, the causes, or thge possible solutions to that crisis, Maurice Saatchi descrbies the NHS as the ultimate “Post-Truth World”. He lists 69 “Alternative Facts” in his Centre for Policy Studies pamphlet An NHS Royal Commission – From fighting fires to a lasting settlement.
Governments working within the constrains of the five-year electoral cycle cannot risk mooting radical reform of the current system. Only a Royal Commission can look beyond the current problems and consider dispassionately the long-term challenges facing the NHS: an ageing population, social care, funding, the growing prevelance of financially draining chronic disease, the impact of poverty on health outcomes, the effects of Brexit on labour supply, and the growing cost of innovation and funding.
Lord Saatchi comments:
“The timing has never been better. We have the finest medical minds in the world, and an impeccable ‘medical history’. If they really believed it was Her Majesty’s wish that they would all sit down together to bring forward a good plan for the nation’s health, it would happen.
It will not be hard. It will be very easy. All the Royal Commission has to do is to find out what people expect and give it to them.
All it needs is a blank sheet of paper and a pencil.”
Click here to read Lord Saatchi’s full report.
SUPPORT IN THE MEDIA
- Lord Saatchi writes the lead op-ed for the Mail on Sunday, Why I believe this is the only thing that can cure our NHS
- The Mail on Sunday Comment: Profiteers are bleeding the NHS to death.
- The Guardian: NHS royal commission should assess long term future, says Lord Saatchi
- The Press Association headline was NHS needs first full body check-up in decades, says peer
- Tim Knox, CPS Director, wrote a comment piece for The Times Red Box
- Lord Saatchi also wrote a piece for the Conservative Home website, Enough of the fake news and alternative facts – the NHS needs a Royal Commission
- The Telegraph wrote We need to take politics out of the NHS and set up a Royal Commission“The Tories need to show leadership here… One way would be to establish a Royal Commission on the NHS. Such bodies fell out of favour in the 1980s largely because Margaret Thatcher was not instinctively inclined to seek a consensus. However, the one subject on which she did consider setting up a Royal Commission was the NHS… If we want to take the politics out of this issue and have a sensible debate about the long-term future of health care, the time has come for another.”
- The British Medical Journal hosted a podcast debate on the topic of a Royal Commission“An independent public inquiry at the highest level would allow important questions to be asked and answered.”
- The Spectator: The NHS is dying and only Theresa May can save it“A Royal Commission is also a good idea from a political perspective because it will raise the kind of questions that terrify politicians: do we, as a society, want to pay for obesity surgery, or IVF, for example? What about sex-change operations and breast enlargements? As our society gets richer, the definition of ‘essential’ care widens. So where should the NHS draw the line? The health service remains remarkably popular, but several generations have been born and brought up under its care, and no longer know anything different. They take it for granted. The cost of healthcare and the taxes we pay have become uncoupled in the collective consciousness.”
- The Daily Mail supports our calls for an NHS Royal Commission and suggests it should be a Tory manifesto pledge
“[Theresa May] could go on to promise to set up a Royal Commission, above the political fray, to examine the whole question of how to keep the NHS and social care — two areas inextricably linked — on a viable footing. Thus, she could lance the boil that has scarred her campaign.”
