The false gods of the NHS are starting to fall

BEFORE we can tackle the problems of the NHS, we have to stop worshipping it. Lord Lawson, when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, ruefully said that the Health Service was ‘the nearest thing the British people now have to a religion’.

He was distressed by the way the health system ate up his Budget, and also by the way in which – however much the Tories spent on it – the Labour Party claimed to be the sole guardian and saviour of a beloved national institution.

The Mail on Sunday’s Survation poll today suggests that, in the public mind, common sense is beginning to take over from unthinking adulation – and also to displace the absurd belief that the NHS belongs only to Labour.

The British public has concluded that Labour did not save the NHS during its ill-organised spending splurge in the Blair era, and that money is not the only issue.

People have also noticed the disastrous effect on the budget of the Government’s needless and self-satisfied pledge to spend – by law – 0.7 per cent of Gross National Income on foreign aid.

Asked where the money should come from to repair the gaps in our health system, voters overwhelmingly choose foreign aid as the area which can best be trimmed.

They recognise that aid is necessary and good, but that spending to meet a target is bound to mean waste and worse.

But what they also see is that many people misuse the medical skill to which they get access, free at the point of use.

In an extraordinary finding, it turns out that more people now blame mass immigration for NHS failings than blame the level of Government funding, an enormous and significant shift which the Labour Party will not be pleased to see.

The outlines of a new policy clearly show in the ideas the public now support in large numbers: charges for drunks who abuse A&E; identity checks to screen out health tourists; means tests for nonessential treatments such as cosmetic and obesity surgery. Longer opening hours for GP surgeries are also extremely popular.

Some of these ideas are more practical than others. Others could be made practical with some thought and effort.

It is clear there is an opportunity here for a determined Government to act, with strong popular support, to place sensible limits on what a national health system can do, without ceasing to be fair and generous to those who need it most.

There has never been a better time for such action. Labour, by choosing Jeremy Corbyn as their leader, have driven themselves to the margins of every major argument including this one, and can no longer gain much by shrill, false claims that the Tories seek to dismantle or privatise the NHS.

Millions of minds are open, for the first time in many years, to thoughtful changes in the tasks the NHS is willing to take on.

Most reasonable people can see the distinction between tattoo removal or obesity treatment and a child in need of an emergency operation.

And most GPs can also see that there is a crisis in the management of surgeries, which is – among other things – leading to dangerous pressure on A&E departments.

The Prime Minister plainly appreciates common sense and workable solutions. A better, more sensible NHS, right now, would be good for Britain and good politics too.