Who’s in charge of the NHS?

Who runs the NHS? With a £136 billion budget for NHS England and NHS Improvement eating up 17.5 per cent of tax revenue, there should be a clear answer to this. But ministers were left wondering when the time came to announce what the health service would achieve with its extra £12 billion from the tax rise. I write in this week’s magazine about the row over waiting lists and how ministers thought the extra cash would cut it to 5.5 million — only to be told it could possibly hit close to 11 million. But there was a row over another point too: the timeline for cancer care.

It’s no secret that cancer care was badly hit during lockdown, with a huge drop in diagnosis. As you’d expect there has been a sharp rise in urgent admissions now, with those who could have been diagnosed earlier only now coming forward.