Public health expert says ministers are ‘not behaving as if they want to preserve the NHS’

The government is ‘not acting as if it wants to keep the NHS’, according to a world celebrity public health expert.

Sir Michael Marmot, former adviser to No10 when Labor was in power said the data supported claims ministers wanted to “destroy” the ailing service.

The idea that the £150bn a year NHS is being set up by the government to fail so that a private healthcare system can be introduced has been echoed by left-wing groups for years.

Sir Michael said: ‘I have no particular insight into what motivates ministers, but they don’t act as if they want to keep our NHS.’

He told LBC’s Andrew Marr, “If you hypothesized that the government wanted to destroy the National Health Service … all the data we’re seeing is consistent with that hypothesis.

Data from NHS England shows the number of people waiting for routine hospital treatment rose by 10,000 in January to 7.22 million, a new record

“They might say ‘no, no, no, no, that’s not what we’re trying to do’ – but if you look from 2010, waiting lists started to increase – not just the pandemic, not just the war in Ukraine – from 2010.’

He said data from the health service is consistent with the idea of ​​a ‘malicious undermining of the NHS’.

Sir Michael, who has been critical of the Tory government in the past, explained that before 2010 – when David Cameron’s Tories came to power – the NHS provided for most Britons.

‘Waiting lists prior to 2010 were falling, satisfaction with the NHS was high, spending on the NHS was rising by about 3.8 per cent each year,’ he said.

But Sir Michael, who still serves as director of the University College of London’s Institute for Health Equity, said that changed when Labor was kicked out of number 10 that year.

“That increase from 3.8 percent per year fell to about 1 percent per year, waiting lists started to rise and rise and rise, 150,000 doctor and nurse job openings, doctors and nurses not being paid,” he said.

“It’s a recipe for overthrowing the NHS.

He also stressed that the NHS is falling in the rankings of the Commonwealth Fund, which compares healthcare systems in 11 countries, including Australia and the US.. Sir Michael described it as a ‘tragedy’.

“The NHS was always number one, and equity of access, number one – the top performer,” he said.

We’re going down the rankings. It’s a tragedy.’

The UK is now fourth in the Commonwealth Fund ranking system.

His stark comments come after years of declining performance on several key NHS stats.

Waiting lists for operations have reached record highs and Britons wait hours for ambulances. The staff’s low wages have led to the largest strike in the history of the 75-year service.

Sir Michael is an established critic of the Tories and wrote a seminal report earlier in 2020 He linked austerity to a slowdown in rising life expectancy and called for higher taxes.

Critics of his work said it failed to explain a similar decline in life expectancy that was also observed in several European countries with different public spending policies.

His claims come after new NHS data released last week revealed that the waiting list for elective NHS treatment in England had grown to a record 7.22 million in February.

Analysis by the think tank The Health Foundation found that the overall pattern of health spending in the UK took a nosedive in 2010

Ambulance data for March shows that heart attack and stroke patients in England, known as category two callers, had to wait an average of 39 minutes and 33 seconds for paramedics to show up. This is more than 7 minutes slower than February and more than double the 18-minute target

More than 500,000 NHS appointments and operations in England have been canceled due to staff strikes, with further disruption planned

Other records showed Britons were on the phone 999 for an ambulance had to wait up to 1 hour and 37 minutes in winter for call handlers to answer the phone.

In fact, heart attack and stroke patients experienced average wait times of nearly 40 minutes — or double the target of 18 minutes.

The NHS is short of around 124,000 staff – equivalent to almost one in 10 positions.

Low wages driving workers to other jobs, sometimes in countries like Australia, is a factor NHS unions use to justify their demands for large wage increases.

The ongoing pay dispute with ministers has led to the cancellation of more than 500,000 NHS appointments as staff took to the picket line, with further strike action planned.

The nurses’ union, The Royal College of Nursing, has announced that members will take 48 hours off work on 30 April to refrain staff from run into battle in the emergency room, intensive care units and cancer wards for the first time.

Other staff groups such as doctors in training, physiotherapists and paramedics have also held similar actions.