Brace for fresh drought this summer

ENGLAND will suffer another drought this summer – and hosepipe bans – unless there is exceptional rainfall in coming months, says the Environment Agency.

Despite recent downpours, most of England is ‘still in drought’, it explains.

Last summer was the driest for 50 years and hosepipe bans were brought in for millions of homes. And latest Met Office figures show December 2022 remained drier than average for the UK.

John Leyland, from the agency, said: ‘We cannot rely on the weather alone – if we are to avoid a worse drought this year, it will require action by us all.’

GIvEN the endless turmoil in the NHS, with A&Es overwhelmed and its waiting lists soaring, the question should have come as no surprise.

On her Sunday morning politics programme, the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg politely asked the Prime Minister whether or not he used private healthcare.

for a moment, Rishi Sunak hesitated. I expected him to then smile and calmly confirm that he had been using private health insurance for years — and explain why he had every right to make this choice.

He might have added that the same was true for most of his Cabinet colleagues — and no doubt for a few Labour shadow ministers as well.

Excruciating

Instead, Mr Sunak attempted to deflect the question. He said that it was ‘not really relevant’ — and then pointed out that his father was an NHS doctor and his mother ran her own pharmacy.

‘I grew up in an NHS family!’ he cried, as if that were a knockout answer.

When the BBC star continued to probe him on the subject, Mr Sunak bridled, saying: ‘As a general policy, I wouldn’t ever talk about me or my family’s healthcare situation.’ And he continued to dodge the question for almost two excruciating minutes.

This was all a gift for Pat Cullen, general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, who has made no secret of her contempt for the Conservative government.

‘[Sunak] ought to be clear with the public whether or not [he’s] using private health cover,’ said Cullen. ‘When you’re accountable to the public, you have to be honest with them.’

She is right. By refusing to say whether or not he has private health insurance, Mr Sunak will only ensure that he continues to face the question in every broadcast and print interview he gives until the next election — or until he finally caves in.

How unnecessary, when we already know the answer! In November, Mr Sunak was revealed in a newspaper to have been registered with a private GP in West London. This clinic charges £250 for a half-hour consultation and guarantees to see patients with urgent concerns ‘ on the day’.

(NHS figures at the time showed that 58 per cent of patients were not seen on the day they made an appointment with their doctor.)

So if Mr Sunak refused to use any other private healthcare beyond his GP you can be sure he would have told us so.

What a contrast his evasiveness was to Margaret Thatcher’s attitude in her heyday. When asked, while campaigning in the 1987 election, whether she paid for her own health treatment, the Iron Lady showed her mettle.

‘I, along with something like five million other people, insure to enable me to go into hospital on the day I want; at the time I want; and with a doctor I want.

‘for me, that is absolutely vital ... Like most people, I pay my dues to the National Health Service. I do not add to the queue ... I exercise my right as a free citizen to spend my own money in my own way, so that I can go in on the day, at the time, with the doctor I choose — and get out fast.’

Permacrisis

Labour MPs were predictably appalled — but voters, perhaps equally predictably, were not. Only a week later, Mrs Thatcher won her third General Election victory, with a thumping majority of 102: a clear sign that voters appreciate it when leaders answer direct questions directly.

But then Margaret Thatcher was a conviction politician, unswerving in her commitment to free-market principles.

Her government even introduced tax relief for private health insurance — a benefit abolished by Gordon Brown in his first Budget as Labour Chancellor in 1997.

As ever-more billions from the taxpayer are poured into the NHS with no discernible improvement in the service, the Prime Minister has no need to be so defensive about exercising his choice.

Instead, he should be extolling the benefits of private care just as Mrs Thatcher did. (Although it is surely too much to hope that he will consider reinstating her perk of making insurance contributions tax-deductible.)

It’s true that Tory PMs since Mrs Thatcher have often boasted of using the NHS. John Major liked to describe how the health service saved his leg after a serious car accident in 1967.

David Cameron regularly referred to the publicly funded care his late disabled son Ivan enjoyed, calling the NHS ‘a fantastic and precious fact of British life’.

Likewise, Boris Johnson sang the praises of his NHS doctors after they helped to save his life following a devastating bout of Covid in April 2020.

They were all honest about their choices as elected leaders — just as Mr Sunak should be today, while reminding us all that he hails from an ‘NHS family’.

The fact is that public attitudes are shifting. Even Labour now acknowledges the benefits of the private sector.

Wes Streeting, the Shadow Health Secretary and a rising star on the Opposition benches, has extolled the virtues of private care in a bid to end what some have called the NHS’s ‘permacrisis’.

‘The last Labour government successfully used the private sector to bring down NHS waiting lists,’ Streeting said recently. ‘By the end of that government, use of the private sector had fallen dramatically because the NHS was so good.’

Keir Starmer himself, who pledged to ‘end outsourcing’ during his campaign to wrest the Labour leadership from his Marxist predecessor Jeremy Corbyn, has now U-turned and also backed using the private sector to cut NHS waiting lists. Starmer and Streeting are not voicing these former Labour heresies out of nowhere. More Britons than ever before are giving up on the NHS and going private.

Last autumn, a survey by the charity Engage Britain found that the number of UK adults turning to private healthcare had soared by 39 per cent over just two years.

One in ten of us is now paying for treatment — which hardly makes Mr Sunak and his family outliers.

Gagged

The simple truth is that, given the pressures on the NHS, the more Britons who ease the pressure on the service by going private, the better. A number of Tory Cabinet ministers think as much and have told me so.

But, I have learned, they are being gagged from saying so publicly for fear of alienating voters. This is a serious political miscalculation.

These same MPs might also point out that Rishi Sunak is the Prime Minister. And does anyone really think that, afflicted by some minor ailment, the most important man in the country should be expected to join the 7.59am telephone queue for his local surgery, to be told by a recorded voice at 8.01am: ‘You are 43rd in line’?

Of course not. Beyond the lunatic fringe, most people accept that Mr Sunak has an important job to do and that with the power and responsibility of his great office come certain privileges.

In exchange, however, he must deliver for voters. And he can start by taking on the NHS union barons who are holding the country to ransom.

By stonewalling on this simple question, Mr Sunak is in danger of making himself look rich and slippery.

So the next time this issue comes up — which could well be in the Commons tomorrow at Prime Minister’s Questions — Mr Sunak should follow Mrs Thatcher’s lead. He must give a straight and honest answer, eloquently explaining his right to spend his own money in the way he chooses.

The Opposition will howl — but I believe the public will respect him for it.