NHS reform

SIR – Daniel Hannan (Comment, August 1) writes that “NHS reform is off the agenda”.

The UK has spent 18 months striving to protect the NHS. It has been at the heart of the Government’s justification for the biggest impingement on our liberties in modern times.

What is extraordinary is that reform is not the Government’s highest priority. The end result will be that, in the not too distant future, we will once again be asked to protect the NHS. Thomas Le Cocq

Batcombe, Somerset

SIR – It’s difficult to know where to start with Daniel Hannan’s article.

The NHS was not responsible for the “early procurement decisions”, “testing” or “PPE procurement”. The distinction between vaccine buying and delivery is valid, but if the purchasing programme is worthy of praise, it is absurd not to recognise the success of the NHS delivery programme – the key driver of Britain’s exit from restrictions, with 72 per cent of the population double-vaccinated.

The trope of NHS doctor and nurse “lions” led by manager “donkeys” is now well past its sell-by date. It was managers and frontline staff working together who created 34,000 beds to treat Covid-19 patients at the drop of a hat last March, delivered a world-class vaccination campaign and led the world in identifying and rolling out new Covid-19 treatments like dexamethasone and remdesivir.

The NHS is not anti-private enterprise. It made significant use of independent-sector capacity during the crisis and will do so again as we clear the backlog created by Covid-19.

NHS capacity is fundamentally determined by funding. It’s the last decade of the longest and deepest funding squeeze in NHS history that is primarily responsible for the current mismatch between capacity and demand that the NHS faces.

Amanda Pritchard is far from a “change averse… continuity candidate”, as her track record as chief executive of Guy’s and St Thomas’s NHS Foundation Trust, and as Chief Operating Officer of NHS England, demonstrates.

No one in the NHS would claim that the service gets everything right. The NHS publicly acknowledged in its own long-term plan that it should improve its performance in cancer and cardiac care. But describing its last 18 months as “a woeful crisis”, with “myriad mistakes”, is misleading.

Adam Brimelow

Director of Communications

NHS Providers

London SW1