The following Statement was made in the House of Commons on Thursday 12 September.
“With permission, I would like to make a Statement on Lord Darzi’s investigation into the NHS.
Unlike the last holders of this office, this Government will be honest about the problems the NHS faces and serious about fixing them. That is why I asked Lord Darzi, an eminent cancer surgeon who served both Labour and Conservative-led Governments with distinction, to conduct an independent investigation into the state of our national health service. I am sure the whole House will want to join me in thanking him for producing this expert, comprehensive report, a copy of which I have placed in the Libraries of both Houses.
I told Lord Darzi that we wanted hard truths, warts and all. His findings are raw, honest and breathtaking. He says:
‘Although I have worked in the NHS for more than 30 years, I have been shocked by what I have found’.
He has uncovered an enormous charge sheet, too long to list in this Statement, so these are just a few: the NHS has not been able to meet its promises to treat patients on time for almost a decade; patients have never been more dissatisfied with the service they receive; waiting lists for mental health and community services have surged; 50 years of progress on cardiovascular disease is going into reverse; and cancer is more likely to be a death sentence for NHS patients than for patients in other countries. It is not just the sickness in the NHS that concerns Lord Darzi, but sickness in society. Children are sicker today than a decade ago and adults are falling into ill health earlier in life. That is piling pressure on to the NHS and holding back our economy.
Those are some of the symptoms; the report is equally damning on the causes. First, a decade of underinvestment left the NHS 15 years behind the private sector on technology, with fewer diagnostic scanners per patient than almost every comparable country, including Belgium, Italy and Greece, and in 2024 mental health patients are treated in Victorian buildings with cockroach and mouse infestations, where 17 men are forced to share two showers.
Secondly, there was the disastrous 2012 top-down reorganisation overseen by Lord Lansley. Lord Darzi’s assessment is damning:
‘A calamity without international precedent…it took a “scorched earth” approach to health reform’.
‘By 2015 … ministers were … putting in place “workarounds and sticking plasters” to bypass the legislation’.
‘Rather than liberating the NHS, as promised, the Health and Social Care Act 2012 imprisoned more than a million NHS staff in a broken system for the best part of a decade’.
‘the effects … are still felt to this day’.
Just imagine if all the time, effort and billions of pounds wasted on dissolving and reconstituting management structures had instead been invested in services for patients—clearly, the NHS would not be in the mess it finds itself in today.
Thirdly, there was coronavirus. Everyone can see the lasting damage caused by the pandemic, but until now we did not know that the pandemic hit the NHS harder than any other comparable healthcare system in the world. The NHS cancelled far more operations and routine care than anywhere else. As Lord Darzi writes:
‘The pandemic’s impact was magnified because the NHS had been seriously weakened in the decade preceding its onset’.
In other words, it is not just that the Conservatives did not fix the roof while the sun was shining; they doused the house in petrol and left the gas on, and Covid just lit the match. That is why waiting lists have ballooned to 7.6 million today. If I were an Opposition Member, I would not complain about the diagnosis. I would take responsibility.
Fourthly—this sits firmly at Opposition Members’ door, so they should sit and listen—there was the failure to reform. From 2019 onwards, the previous Government oversaw a 17% increase in the number of staff working in hospitals. Did it lead to better outcomes for patients? No. At great expense to the taxpayer, the NHS has instead seen a huge fall in productivity. We paid more but got less—a deplorable waste of resources when so many parts of our health and care services were crying out for investment. As Lord Darzi has put it: