It’s pretty clear that the NHS is at the top of most voters’ priorities, with big concerns about access to GPs, lengthy waiting lists, and a sense that it has been starved of funds and resources. To add to the NHS’s problems, the country has very poor levels of health with an ageing population, which are big drivers of demand on the NHS. It is sometimes described as a national sickness rather than a health service. This has much wider economic and social impacts, not least in the number of people unable to work because of health issues.
Many different factors cause ill health and most lie outside the NHS itself. Diet, exercise, housing, and poverty are just a few examples. The reports by Sir Michael Marmot go into the detail. This makes ill health a particular challenge to tackle, but unless we tackle it, demand on the NHS will grow unmanageably along with the costs.
To discuss these issues, Green Book Pod is back with another episode in our series on key issues for the Liberal Democrats, now available on Lib Dem Podcast and on YouTube.
Chairing the session is Norman Lamb, who was a LibDem MP and a health minister. He now chairs the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust and co-chairs the Health Devolution Commission.
Bringing a perspective from inside the NHS, Wendy Taylor was an oncology consultant. She is also a LibDem councillor in Newcastle City and is currently the chair of the Health and Social Care Committee.
Roy Lilley and Ed Smith are collaborating on a book about the subject, which they refer to as the ‘elephant in the room’, and last year published 200 Questions for the Future of the NHS. Roy is a health policy analyst, writer, broadcaster and commentator on NHS. He has been the vice chairman of a health authority and chair of an NHS trust, and has taught at both Imperial College and Nottingham University. Ed Smith was the chair of NHS Improvement, and deputy chair of NHS England. He now supports a number of health organisations along with other advisory roles in the UK health economy.
In the podcast we look at the drivers of ill health and how they can be tackled. In particular we look at the politics and organisational aspects and the importance of much more local and collaborative approaches.
This is the fifth in the Green Book Pod series – you can download and listen on all the main podcast channels (search for Lib Dem Podcast) or watch it online on YouTube here.
For more on the Green Book initiative, visit our new website here where you catch up with our first four episodes, addressing economic policy, net zero, Europe and AI.
* Robin Stafford is a party member who has worked across private and public sectors, as well as with the third sector and charities. In recent years he has provided support to the party on economic and business policy.
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12 Comments
I disagree – #1 is the economy / cost of living, #2 is immigration and the NHS is #3.
Thank you for a most important article!
Might a significant set of the causes of our increasing national ill-health be Austerity aka. “The National Ill-Health Service”. It is the current government’s practical application of its socio-economic philosophy of Neoliberalism.
The submerged realities of Neoliberalism are a combination of ever lessening income for regular people, starting with the weakest and poorest, and so most easily deprived, and a cannibalism of the infrastructures which are essential for a healthy, productive society.
So very much of our society’s ill-health-caused-inefficiency are the result of HMG’s hidden policy of increasing intertextuality which is a word-concept essential for this most important conversation.
Very basically, “Intertextuality””means that when someone has one problem they have others too. The data on poor, unskilled, less than healthy persons in Blackpool demonstrates this.
No less valuable are the phrase-concepts “Cumulative Advantage” and “Cumulative Disadvantage” which, crudely, mean that those starting life with advantages get more advantages and those starting with disadvantages get ever more disadvantages.
That is unless H M G does its real duty and genuinely strives to make its society more equitably pro-social.and so more healthy and productive.
Grovelling apologies!
The word-concept “Intersectionality” should have been used instead of intertextuality in my above contribution.
@David – since the claim in the article is what voters’ top priorities are, that claim is testable 🙂 According to YouGov, it’s 1. The economy (currently 54%), 2. Health (46%), 3. Immigration (37%) – so neither you nor Robin is correct ;-). Source: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/society/trackers/the-most-important-issues-facing-the-country
(Side note to those who keep posting articles demanding that the LibDems focus on poverty as our key vote-grabbing message: Welfare benefits scarcely even figure on voters’ concerns, being mentioned by just 8%)
@ Simon R,
Voters would probably consider that the state of the economy was responsible for most poverty. Not necessarily because of a lack of jobs but a lack of jobs which pay sufficiently well to afford a decent standard of living.
Hardly anyone, regardless of their position in the political spectrum, would say they wanted anyone to live in poverty. However, the view that it can be solved by increasing welfare benefits is very much a minority one as your figures show.
They don’t show that the majority are happy that society is as unequal as it is – just that we need to tackle the poverty problem from a different angle.
@Peter Martin. Yep. I can’t disagree with any of that. (A rare complete agreement here haha)
People are feeling poor right now. They don’t attribute that to low benefit levels unless benefits are their primary income (and most pensioners don’t think they are on benefits). Even most who are on benefits will frame the problem as prices being too high to afford on their income rather than their incomes being too low to afford things.
The NHS is hardly starved of funds or resources, it is starved of good management.
Might neo-liberalism/austerity be depriving our essential infrastructures of resources and good management?
@Trevethan; I’d say no, the resources and finances are there, no political party seems willing to slay the ‘ holy cow’ that is the NHS. Everyone seems to realise that it isn’t working, some people argue for yet more and more funding. Very few politicians dare suggest it needs root and branch reform, which would include a discussion re how much longer everything can be free at the point of use. A+E yes, acute conditions, probably, chronic conditions maybe not. Or say where the money is coming from given that defence, education, and social services also need additional funding.
Will the Lib Dems be campaigning on significant tax rises for the majority of the population??
Might we please have some data with provenance to support assertions that sufficient resources and finances are there for the N H S?
@Steve Trevethan, define sufficient, what data set would convince you? How many more billions would you say need to be pumped into the system?
I’m afraid junior Drs holding up placards stating that they are on minimum wage does not convince.
The NHS had many problems, operational inertia, strategic incontinence, and financial management verging on criminal negligence, but it does not lack for funds, 7is it 40% of government spending on goods and services or is that figure even higher now? One of the largest employers in the world, 1000,000 plus employees, with the Chinese army being one of the few organisations with more employees. And yet the NHS, with a few notable exceptions, is failing miserably.
I don’t earn huge amounts of cash, but, I have comprehensive private medical insurance for myself and my family, it’s about priorities.