The NHS recovery plan is in disarray

Editorial: Just like so many MRI scans and operations for cataracts, the NHS recovery plan has been put back again, indefinitely

Now that the Omicron wave has subsided, the NHS – and the country – needs to know when and how things will return to something like normal (PA)

All is not well with the NHS recovery plan. More than 300,000 people in pain and distress have been waiting more than a year for operations, yet they have no more idea of when they will be attended to than they did last autumn. Some 6 million people are waiting for non-surgical treatment. Routine surgery has been suspended at various times in the pandemic, and in recent weeks pressures have intensified in emergency care and the ambulance service. Some hospital trusts have declared critical incidents.

Now that the Omicron wave has subsided, the NHS – as well as the country – needs to know when and how things will return to something like normal. But, just like so many MRI scans and operations for cataracts, the NHS recovery plan has been put back again, indefinitely.

The plan was supposed to be ready in early December. Then the Omicron wave arrived, so it was postponed until now. But, seemingly at the last moment, it has been delayed once again. The Treasury and the Department of Health and Social Care cannot agree on the funding and the “terms”, we assume.

Boris Johnson no longer has the authority to break the deadlock and impose his will on his squabbling ministers. Perhaps there are more sinister things going on, with leadership games afoot, as some speculate. Maybe Rishi Sunak is determined to derail the prime minister’s personal recovery programme, even at a cost to patient care. He might be making a performative point about protecting the public finances (and taxpayers’ money), as so many Tory backbenchers yearn to see.

Could Sajid Javid, the former chancellor and former leadership contender, be reviving his political ambitions and daring to dream? Is he trying to get his way in order to show his commitment to a different stripe of Toryism? Or is it that the whole machinery of government is paralysed  by Partygate, the leadership crisis, and a hollowed-out 10 Downing Street? It is certainly bad news for anyone waiting for a cancer diagnosis, a new hip or a GP appointment.

And so we are treated to an unusually vacuous photo opp featuring the prime minister and Sunak, this time at the oncology unit at Maidstone Hospital. Clearly it was too late to cancel the event when the decision was made to shelve the launch, so it had to go ahead anyway. But the prime minister still needed something to say.

All he could offer was boosterish talk. So he announced “tough” targets for the NHS. Or, rather, he announced that tough new targets were going to be announced just as soon as they had all agreed on what they would be. So there is not even a target date for when the NHS targets and the wider recovery plan will be launched. It is the stuff of satire.

To keep up to speed with all the latest opinions and comment sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter by clicking here

Apparently, there is to be a new online platform called My Planned Care, which will allow people needing non-urgent surgery to get “information” about waiting times. It will also offer advice on prevention – such as exercise plans and help to stop smoking – and on preparing for surgery. It’s all very well, but it hardly matches the scale of the challenge. Of course, My Planned Care is not yet online.

There is no excuse for delay. If the Treasury “intervened” to prevent publication of the NHS recovery plan, such a move ought to have been rebuffed by the prime minister. The balance of risks is still greater to the public health than to the public finances. During the Covid pandemic, the health service and its staff performed magnificently, even when they were short of essential equipment.

No one has a bigger interest in reducing waiting times and easing the pressure on services than the hard-working, devoted teams of the NHS. On the wards, in the ambulances, around the clinics and in care homes, they set their own “tough targets” every moment of the day. NHS professionals really don’t need lectures from Mr Johnson, Mr Sunak and Mr Javid about hitting targets when these leaders, with the entire civil service at their disposal, can’t even get a document out on time.

NHS clinical and support staff have been exhausted by this emergency, and the least they can expect from the government is to be given some hope. Instead they are offered excuses and patronising slogans. Meanwhile, people are in pain. We can’t go on like this.