The right way – and the wrong way – to reform the NHS

Editorial: Sajid Javid, the Conservative former health secretary, proposes charging for GP appointments

We have a great deal to learn from other countries in making our health service better (PA Wire)

The case for fundamental change in the way the National Health Service is run is gaining strength from the current crisis. It is true, as the prime minister argues, that health services in other countries are also going through difficulties because of the backlogs caused by coronavirus.

It is also true, as the leader of the opposition argues, that the NHS was in a good state when the last Labour government left office 13 years ago, suggesting that there is nothing wrong with it that cannot be put right by several years of sustained additional public spending.

But the problems of the NHS are worse than those in comparable countries, whose citizens look on our waiting times for ambulances with sympathy and alarm. And the problem of a taxpayer-funded service that is mostly free at the point of need is that it seems destined to go through cycles of, if not feast and famine, then adequacy and famine.