Health Secretary needs to tread carefully about private investment in the NHS
Health Secretary Wes Streeting is right when he says there is a lot of work to do before we have the kind of NHS we would all want to see.
In fairness to Mr Streeting, the NHS has faced unprecedented demands over the past decade, and it would be naive to expect any government to turn it around in a matter of months.
While the Prime Minister may have claimed the NHS was 'on its knees' prior to the General Election, the reality is that it has actually coped quite well considering the impossible pressures faced during the pandemic.
Mr Streeting says private investment must play a role in delivering improvements to health care, and it is understandable that many will be cautious about this. We don't share the view of some on the Left that private investment is by definition an anathema, but we would not wish to see a repeat of some of the mistakes made during the Blair era. At the time, the Private Finance Initiative was seen as the silver bullet to get major investment into the public sector, without having to put up taxes, and for a time it appeared to work. But now, as many of these 25-year contracts draw to an end, the chickens are coming home to roost.
The NHS exists to provide patient care, not transformative ideology, and the Health Secretary is right not to rule out potential investment just because it goes against the principles of those on the Left.
But equally, he should tread carefully, and think of the long-term as well as the immediate future.
