There’s little to celebrate on the NHS’s birthday

Birthday celebrations for the NHS this year are relatively quiet. In recent years the health service has received multi-billion pound top-ups from the taxpayer, not to mention high praise from politicians across the political spectrum. This may be in part because the government has already seen to the big NHS pledges, including the 2.5 per cent National Insurance hike, split between workers and employers, which is bringing in roughly £6 billion to pay for Covid catch-up. But no doubt this year’s notable silence is also linked to just how bad that catch-up is going.

It’s never been credible to claim the NHS is the ‘envy of the world’; the health system is in fact an international laggard, ranking in the bottom third of developed countries for patient outcomes long before the pandemic hit. But it is only becoming harder to make this bold claim, as the NHS’s 74th birthday is simply drawing attention to the increasingly perilous state of the health service.