The most interesting thing about Lord Ara Darzi’s report on the health service, expected to be published this Thursday, is how ministers decide to use it. The former health minister from the last Labour government was commissioned to carry out a rapid review of how well the NHS is functioning. He is expected to conclude that it really isn’t: yesterday, Keir Starmer said that Darzi was ‘really clear that the NHS is broken but not beaten’.
The Health Secretary is likely to call for higher capital funding in the next spending review
A lot of the pre-briefing so far has been that Darzi will say that the NHS is going backwards for the first time in 50 years on waiting times and deaths from heart disease. His report is also expected to state that the previous government left the service particularly poorly prepared for the pandemic. Ministers will certainly use that as part of their narrative that ‘the Tories broke everything’, but there is another finding that is more potent.
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