Lord Darzi’s independent recent report lays bare the true state of our NHS.

It finds high risk patients facing long waits for treatment including almost 350,000 people waiting for mental health treatment. Darzi acknowledges the huge impact of the Covid crisis but finds a fragile NHS before Covid hit with too few doctors, too few nurses and too few beds. And Darzi points to the Lansley reorganisation of 2012 as the clear cause of that chaos.

Let’s be clear, our NHS staff do a fantastic job for which we owe them a great deal. They are not to blame for the lost decade which to all intents and purposes broke the NHS.

The report also found patients waiting far too long for a cancer diagnosis and as a result cancer death rates higher than other countries. Modern healthcare increasingly depends upon advanced technology, yet our NHS has shamefully few scanners. It is one of the great fears of any parent that their child would be diagnosed with cancer, but many are. In fact, over 1,800 children are diagnosed with cancer every year in the UK. Leukaemia brain tumours and lymphomas are the most common types. Sadly, more than 250 die each year. We owe it to them to do more.

The Government’s Ten-Year plan sets out to fix this with more scanners and new technologies and a shift from moving from sickness to prevention. But success depends on the support of NHS staff to be successful. It needs investment but investment without wholesale reform will not bring the generational change our NHS needs.