Broken system is exposed

As we grapple with chaotic ambiguity of this government’s latest instructions (or is it just advice?) on how to survive the Covid-19 pandemic, the reasons why Britain has one of the worst death rates in Europe are becoming clearer.

It’s not just that our rulers, unlike those of most other countries, were too slow to act; nor that our Brexit-obsessed

political masters couldn’t bring themselves to work together with other EU governments over procurement or to observe scientific advice if it was tainted with the World Health Organisation. These hesitations mattered and will probably, when all the figures are collected and analysed, be found to have cost thousands of British lives.

It’s a purely home-grown mistake which is emerging as key.

At the 2010 general election, the Conservative manifesto promised “No top-down reorganisation” of the National Health Service. But Cameron appointed Andrew Lansley to reorganise the NHS on a more centralised basis, ignoring the protests of NHS professionals. Consequently, our centralised system (whilst able to command the building of brand new Nightingale hospitals) has not had the local capacity to test and trace for Covid-19, which common sense recommends. This has been compounded by the way the Osborne budgetary regime starved local government - local councils are the best level at which to monitor public health; England as a whole is too large and diverse and the Cameron government, in a fit of anti-eu pique, had also abolished the limited regional government level which the Major and Blair governments had allowed. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland enjoy the benefits of governments closer to their people and their problems. Why should the English regions not have that benefit?

When I bang my saucepan on Thursday evenings for health and other key workers, it is for them personally and definitely not the over-centralised system itself.