{"id":81631,"date":"2025-04-14T08:05:50","date_gmt":"2025-04-14T07:05:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=81631"},"modified":"2025-04-14T08:06:07","modified_gmt":"2025-04-14T07:06:07","slug":"streetings-nhs-madness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2025\/04\/14\/streetings-nhs-madness\/","title":{"rendered":"Streeting’s NHS madness"},"content":{"rendered":"

I tried to work out how to summarise Roy Lilley's morning email this morning<\/a> on the madness that Wes Streeting is unleashing on the NHS, and failed. So I am copying it with a suggestion that this is well worth subscribing to:<\/em><\/p>\n

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When the prime minister and chancellor say the world has changed, mostly for the worse\u00a0there's a certain type of person who takes that as permission to do the big and ugly things voters would never vote for a Labour government to do.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s happening to the NHS, right now.<\/p>\n

Who and how was it decided that NHSE would go, budgets would be cut by 50% and the upshot\u2026 thousands of people sacked?<\/p>\n

Where is the strategic analysis? The Board decision? The Bill? The risk assessment? The analysis?\u00a0 The impact statement? The plan? The license from the voters to demolish parts of their NHS?<\/p>\n

Capricious decisions, erratic, volatile and like a ticking time-bomb smuggled deep into the foundations of the service.<\/p>\n

As Isabel Hardman\u00a0comments in the iNewspaper<\/a>; Wes Streeting has a chainsaw but no vision for the NHS.\u00a0She is right about the vision and the chainsaw but not the person wielding it.<\/p>\n

Tell me decisions weren't arrived at on the hoof over a weekend, by Alan Milburn egging on Silly Boy and announced the following Monday.<\/p>\n

The cunning plan; slash the budgets, stand back and let the service fight itself for survival; forcing a reduction in headcount, without wasting time on analysis or permission.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll have to go some to tell me that the poor-man\u2019s Elon Musk, Alan Milburn doesn\u2019t own the chainsaw.<\/p>\n

Some of the impact;<\/p>\n