THE NHS reforms announced yesterday are a promising if limited start to the revolution required to drag a system designed for 1948 into the 21st Century.
It is depressing to think that diagnostic tests being made available locally 12 hours a day, seven days a week represent a giant leap forward — but that is where we are.
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Meanwhile expanding the role of private hospitals in our state system is a breakthrough we have urged for years.
It is a tad jarring to hear Keir Starmer announce that in this respect the NHS “must be totally unburdened by dogma”.
Only last year he said he and his family would never, under any circumstances, go private.
Indeed the very word “private” triggered a murderous rage in Labour’s ranks in opposition.
It proved, they shrieked, that the wicked Tories would “sell our NHS to Trump”.
Good luck, then, to Sir Keir with all that dogma-shedding — not least among the dogma lovers of the health unions which bankroll his party.
Their unbending belief in endlessly increased NHS funding will be the hardest to break.
Already there are calls for billions more on top of the £22billion extra in the Budget . . . as if that will magically fix anything when productivity has collapsed.
When the PM says the NHS is “becoming” a money pit, he’s a few decades late.
That aside, waiting lists — for tests through to ops — are a disaster and Labour promised us radical change.
This is a first step we welcome.
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Stand down
IF a Tory anti-corruption minister was being probed for corruption, Labour would have obsessed over it 24/7.
They would have sustained a TV and social media storm until that minister was at least suspended.
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Labour must know City Minister Tulip Siddiq’s position is untenable pending allegations here and in Bangladesh.
She adamantly denies them, has referred herself to the Government’s sleaze watchdog and is innocent until proven otherwise.
But she cannot credibly carry out her duties with that hanging over her.
Labour would have insisted a Tory minister must stand aside.
How is it different now they’re in power?
Costly neglect
ONE moment the Treasury talks about every pound of spending being scrutinised.
The next we learn more than half a billion was paid in benefits to the dead.
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It’s not Labour’s fault.
It happened equally under the Tories.
It is a mark of the scant regard civil servants, in this case at the DWP, have for our money.
Maybe if a few ever got sacked for incompetence the rest would up their game.