Health leaders recognise Lord Darzi's diagnosis of issues facing the NHS

Responding to the Darzi review findings NHS Confederation chief executive Matthew Taylor, who was asked by Lord Darzi to lead one of review's engagement sessions, said:

“This report paints a bleak picture of the state of an NHS which, despite working harder than ever before, has been struggling in the face of rising demand, a decade of underinvestment and the impact of the pandemic. NHS leaders will recognise Lord Darzi’s diagnosis of the NHS’ problems and will work with the government to help address them.

“The review has rightly identified many of the root causes, not least how we invest much less in our buildings, technology and equipment than many comparable countries. And how the ill-fated NHS reforms of the early 2010s were an unnecessary distraction and stripped out vital management capacity that has harmed efforts to make services more productive. We would add the parlous state of social care to that list, which successive governments have failed to address. 

“The government has taken the first necessary step in diagnosing the problem, and the task now is to move to identifying the prescription. Ministers will need to work on two fronts. First, to help the NHS avoid a winter crisis given the financial crisis that is engulfing the service. NHS leaders are already having to make tough choices about what services and staff they can afford at a time when they actually want to be preparing to ramp up capacity to meet the usual spike in demand over winter. Emergency funding will be needed in the Autumn Budget, not least to boost staff and capacity in social care. We also cannot repeat the mistakes of the past by raiding already overstretched capital budgets to plug holes in day to day spending.

“In parallel, the government needs to prepare for the long term through its planned 10 year strategy. We know this is far from easy given the perilous state of the public finances. But the fact remains that unless we restore the NHS to the long term average funding increases it needs, accompanied with changes to the way that local services are delivered, then we will never bring down waiting lists to the levels required as well as preventing more illness from occurring in the first place.”