Elective surgical centres would be an efficient way to lighten the load on acute hospitals. The health service must be less monolithic in order to cope better.
Charlie Gard’s case highlights how the culture of the Health Service can make it deeply resistant to the legitimate wishes of patients.
The Conservative priority must instead be to ensure health policy is guided by experts in the field of nutrition, not enthusiastic amateurs spouting sound bites instead of science.
There is a sense of entitlement that they should be carried along without any competition, meaningful performance reviews or a healthy fear of unemployment.
I’m ashamed of the way some of my fellow doctors responded to a perfectly reasonable speech by Jeremy Hunt.
Ministers are not suggesting that GP surgeries open all hours over weekends to sort out routine issues, but that the workload of urgent cases is more evenly distributed.
They and other similar groups are a minor curiosity in this election, but they are a sign of a culture to the left of Labour in parts of our healthcare system.
It was the wartime Minister for Health, the Conservative Party’s Sir Henry Willink, who actually published the 1944 White Paper in response titled ‘A National Health Service’.
