Critical condition

The report from the Commons health select committee confirms what everyone knows: that the NHS is beset by a crisis affecting health outcomes across the country. Persistent understaffing poses a serious risk to patient safety in routine and emergency care.

Catastrophic shortcomings permeate the entire service, from primary care through to ambulance responses, A&E and hospital operating theatres. The Opposition says the Tories starved the NHS of funds, but more is now spent on health in the UK as a proportion of GDP than in many other similar countries – and yet the outcomes are worse.

Radical thinking is needed. One idea that could be usefully revived is to offer tax relief on private medical insurance. Such a scheme was introduced in 1990 for those aged 60 or over. It grew to cover about 550,000 people and reduced pressure on the NHS.

But it conflicted with the founding theology of the health service that it should be free to all at the point of delivery and private care discouraged. So Labour abolished it in 1997 because it was “unfair” and supposedly expensive, costing £110million – a drop in the ocean compared with the vast sums being spent on the NHS today.

There is nothing remotely fair about the way the health service operates now, with millions awaiting treatment. The opposition to tax breaks for private insurance is purely ideological and until politicians break free from the straitjacket of the 1948 dispensation this debate will go nowhere.

The Government needs to open up choices for those failed by the state system. The Conservatives should be encouraging more people to provide for their own healthcare.