The NHS Doesn't Need Lectures From No 10 – It Needs A Proper Plan

All is not well with the NHS recovery plan. More than 300,000 people in pain and distress have been waiting more than a year for operations, yet they have no more idea of when they will be attended to than they did last autumn.

Some 6 million people are waiting for non-surgical treatment. Routine surgery has been suspended at various times in the pandemic, and in recent weeks pressures have intensified in emergency care and the ambulance service. Some hospital trusts have declared critical incidents.

Now that the Omicron wave has subsided, the NHS – as well as the country – needs to know when and how things will return to something like normal. But, just like so many MRI scans and operations for cataracts, the NHS recovery plan has been put back again, indefinitely. The plan was supposed to be ready in early December. Then the Omicron wave arrived, so it was postponed until now. But, seemingly at the last moment, it has been delayed once again. The Treasury and the Department of Health and Social Care cannot agree on the funding and the “terms”, we assume.