NHS at 75: Saving the health service requires a political truce to allow controversial solutions to be discussed – Euan McColm

For all their talk of defending the NHS, all the mainstream political parties have failed it

Few things unite us in quite the way the National Health Service does. Regardless of an individual’s politics, it’s a safe bet he’ll be pro-NHS. Who wouldn’t be? Advanced healthcare free at the point of delivery is something worth celebrating and preserving.

But there’s more to it, isn’t there? Don’t we allow ourselves to see the NHS as the embodiment of our own impeccable values? Wringing one's hands about the current state of the health service shows others one is a person of wisdom and compassion.

Established on July 5, 1948, the NHS is 75 years old today. There’s a strong argument for the creation of the service being the most significant act of any UK Government. Politicians compete to be seen as the natural guardians of the NHS.

Politicians who suggest the NHS might need radical surgery face being denounced for trying to destroy the service (Picture: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

In the years before the SNP’s first Holyrood election victory in 2007, Nicola Sturgeon – then her party’s health spokesperson – made a decent fist of persuading many of us that if one wished to support the values of the Labour party that founded the NHS, one should vote SNP. A vote for the modern Labour party would be a vote for “red Tories” who’d dismantle, privatise and generally go out of their way to destroy the service.

But for all their talk of defending the NHS, political parties – across the mainstream – have failed it. No senior politician is willing to be honest with voters about the extent of problems within the NHS and the cost of improving them. Any leader who dares suggest the NHS might need radical surgery can expect her opponents to have issued a press release denouncing her plans to destroy the service before she stops speaking.

Those participating in a meeting of health service managers last year were urged to discuss any and all possible ways of improving the NHS. Nothing was to be out of bounds. That wasn’t true. The mention by one manager of the use of private provision kicked off an unseemly, point-scoring, political row. Opposition politicians accused the SNP of wishing to privatise the NHS. The SNP pledged never so to do.

Regardless of this promise, many Scots have first-hand experience of the private health sector. In the year 2021-22, 39,000 of us had private spells in hospital. With waiting times for straightforward but life-changing procedures such as cataract surgery topping nine months, perhaps it’s unsurprising so many preferred to pay for immediate treatment.

When the NHS was founded, men were lucky to make it to 65. Today, in Scotland, men can expect to live until 76. It is foolish to expect the health service to keep pace with changing need if it is not properly funded and regularly reformed.

If the NHS is to regain its health, we need either a political truce where leaders of all parties publicly agree the service is in trouble and admit it’s time to talk about how we maintain provision while facing the pressures that come with rapidly growing numbers of elderly people, or we need the matter to be handed to an independent Royal Commission, which should be free to ask difficult questions and offer controversial solutions.

If the NHS is to survive for another 75 years, it needs urgent treatment, right now.