Fraser Nelson in conversation with Karol Sikora

Professor Karol Sikora was supposed to be a guest on a Spectator panel last year when one sponsor said they would pull their funding unless he was dropped. Instead the sponsor was dropped, Sikora stayed and today he was back again, opening The Spectator’s Health Summit with our editor Fraser Nelson. 

Does it matter if the UK has world-beating cancer treatment if the structure to implement it isn’t there? Or if the UK is the sixth highest funded country in the OECD if it’s one of the worst countries for patient outcomes? The organisational problems in our health service, Professor Sikora says, are worsening its performance. The senior oncologist began by listing off failures: ‘The infrastructure is falling apart. The access is so poor to the NHS for the average patient. [The NHS] is just not seeing more customers in an efficient manner.’

But while it has been so frequently dubbed a victim of underfunding, Sikora is insistent that money isn’t the issue.