Dear Mr Streeting
I note that there is an unexpected £3billion extra cost to the NHS due to several factors including strikes.
May I point out that the NHS can never perform in its present state and structure? Although getting rid of NHS England was a good start.
Two recent numbers reported in the press highlight the problems. One is that the litigation costs of the NHS are now over £60billion, and the other is that more than 300 NHS staff including senior consultants and managers now work from abroad, let alone just working from home.
The NHS cannot be managed by remote control or, I would add, without direct clinical control.
Junior doctors are threatening strike action again for a large unaffordable pay rise. You have quite rightly sought to look at other ways to improve their lot. As a retired consultant who has uniquely worked in the NHS as a general physician, as a virologist, immunologist and oncologist, I must say I am appalled at the way junior doctors (as opposed to resident – there is no resident accommodation at most hospitals) are treated. They do not know where they are going to work next on truly ludicrous rotations and conditions. Moreover, training posts have been sacrificed for short-term savings and long-term collapse.
During a recent visit to a hospital I discovered that it was advertising for a diversity manager, no qualifications necessary, on a salary twice that of a junior doctor. I can only surmise that this is intended to incite insurrection amongst doctors who are already treated as if they are dispensable and easily replaced.
The fact that around 50 per cent of NHS staff are not British-born makes this nod to the DEI movement totally insane. There is no hope of improving the above figures – £3billion and £60billion – while this remains unaddressed.
Another factor rarely recognised is the enormous energy consumption by the NHS state-within-a-state. These costs are now the highest in the world and entirely self-inflicted. The Government needs to replace its Climate Change Committee with proper scientists who look at the evidence and rather than questionable computer modellers.
The reality is that there is no man-made global warming and that CO2 increases follow warming periods and do not precede global warming, which is just cyclical natural change. It should be mandatory for anyone involved to watch the Nobel laureate John Clauser and many others explain this on Climate: The Movie (The Cold Truth).
These out-of-control costs, which could easily be addressed by delaying efforts to achieve net zero by a hundred years, are the evidence that shows how the NHS needs a top-down overhaul.
Recent events have confirmed that the Home Office is completely incompetent at even the simplest task and must be reformed. The NHS is also mugged in plain sight with nothing done about it. The retired head of a building firm told me about a cartel they ran for more than 20 years which got the NHS to pay three times the rate that any commercial organisation would pay. The former head of marketing of a major pharmaceutical company, also retired, told me it was easier selling to the NHS than anywhere else.
It is time for a proper review to address the billions spent on drugs and vaccines that are not needed and cause more harm than good. NICE (the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) was a good idea at the time but is no longer fit for purpose. There is no justification for prescribing statins for everyone as well as anti-hypertensives, diabetic and depressant medications, flu vaccines for all, and covid boosters. All of these are unnecessary and pushed for by Big Pharma.
The idea of establishing carbon capture at a cost of £22billion is beyond parody, like paying people to bury the wind in the garden for all the use it is. I suggest you chat with Rachel and Ed about this.
Yours sincerely
Angus Dalgleish
