Why now? Why, in the midst of a pandemic, and with health professionals complaining that the NHS is under intense strain, is the government contemplating another wide-ranging review?
Why is this suddenly the priority when, after almost a year and £22bn expended, the nation still has no properly effective test and trace system? Or when the nation’s GPs, dentists and operating theatres will soon have to cope with a huge backlog of postponed treatments? And why, behind this sudden flurry of activity, is precisely nothing going to be done to fix the long-term crisis in social care, a full decade after the Dilnot report, which still represents the only practical set of proposals for sustainable change.
The answer given by the health and social care secretary, Matt Hancock, is “if not now, when?” The white paper on reorganisation of the health service in England (the rest of the UK is spared) is presented as the means by which the NHS will itself recover from its brush with Covid-19. It is a nice rhetorical line but the fact remains that creating complicated new integrated healthcare structures and dismantling the last lot of reforms can surely wait a little longer, until a time when clinicians, managers and civil servants don’t have rather more pressing matters to attend to.
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