We all know the NHS is broken – but can Labour fix it?

There are few surprises in Lord Darzi’s review of the National Health Service, not least because much of it has already leaked out. Health Secretary Wes Streeting declared immediately after Labour won the election that the NHS was ‘broken’. Darzi, a surgeon and former Labour health minister whom Streeting commissioned to undertake the probe, appears to have reached a similar conclusion in today’s report, though not in as few words.

‘We have crumbling buildings, mental health patients being accommodated in Victorian-era cells . . . and parts of the NHS operating in decrepit portacabins,’ Darzi says. His diagnosis is that Britain has underspent on health assets and infrastructure in the NHS by some £40 billion compared to similar countries over the last 15 years. This has, unsurprisingly, had a profound and negative effect on modernisation and care backlogs. The failure to invest in up-to-date equipment like MRI machines and CAT scanners has prevented clinicians from making major inroads into waiting lists for routine care.