Can you imagine anything worse than a foreign company whose software saved lives, cut NHS waiting lists, put more police on the beat and reduced crime? It’s appalling, isn’t it? No British government or public sector body should have any dealings with such a company. Obviously. Much better to let patients die, cut police jobs […]
Even though the final local election results won’t be declared for a while yet, it’s clear there are glum faces in our two traditionally-biggest parties, an enormous trademark grin from Nigel Farage at Reform UK, and that Zack Polanski’s Greens are on the march. The populist parties aren’t gaining because they discovered a magical […]
To egalitarians, anything that rises above the average, be it wealth or exceptional beauty, is questionable. And, as in the economic and social spheres, this is another area in which they expect the state to intervene with regulations and bans. Heather Widdows, whose book ‘Perfect Me: Beauty as an Ethical Ideal’ was published in 2018, […]
Every so often, in up-and-coming neighbourhoods full of progressive metropolitan types, a group of community-minded idealists will set up a restaurant where diners pay what they feel their meal is really worth, rather than anything as capitalist or bourgeois as a preset price. They don’t last long, of course. The number of right-on diners willing […]
A report from Healthwatch England has found a dramatic increase in the number of people in Britain using private healthcare. It says: In 2023, 9% of those we polled had accessed private healthcare in the last year. By 2025, this figure nearly doubled to 16%. The use of private dental care increased from 22% to […]
Britain’s doctor shortage didn’t happen by accident. For more than a decade, governments capped medical school places – frozen at 7,500 in England for years and only rising this year to 8,126 – and turned away thousands of qualified home students. The predictable result was that the NHS filled the gap by recruiting doctors from […]
A parliamentary petition calling for a Maternity Commissioner – launched just three weeks ago – hit an important milestone this week when it reached 100,000 signatures. Myself and women’s rights campaigner and TV personality Louise Thompson organised the petition because we believe an expert in charge of England’s maternity services is vital. We believe it […]
Christmas is just around the corner. Brits across the country are preparing their mince pies, filling stockings with gifts for loved ones and stocking up on booze. Yet despite the festive cheer, the Grinch is trying to steal Christmas once again. Not the green, Christmas-hating monster. No, this is a more familiar fun sponge. Our […]
This article is the latest in a fortnightly series of policy proposals from John Penrose and the Centre for Small State Conservatives. You can read the previous instalments here. Wes Streeting wants you know that he really, definitely isn’t plotting against Keir Starmer. Honest. In fairness, with NHS productivity flatlining since the pandemic, resident (formerly known […]
The Tobacco and Vapes Bill is back in the Lords. I, like many sensible-minded people in Westminster, had hoped the Labour Government had finally realised that it was an unworkable mess which runs roughshod over personal liberty, places ridiculous burdens on small independent shops and risks an explosion in criminality. That it would rightly be […]
With millions waiting for specialist care and NHS waiting lists stubbornly high, Britain’s healthcare system is in urgent need of reform. Even Labour acknowledge this, although so far Wes Streeting’s proposals have lacked ambition. To make the NHS work more effectively, we need to move towards a system where patient demands, not bureaucratic will, are […]
Strikes are only as effective as the harm they cause. When the miners downed tools in the 1970s, they plunged the country into darkness. When train drivers walk out, they impose immense annoyance, inconvenience and costs. When doctors go on strike, people die. That is the logic with which the British Medical Association (BMA) is […]
Yesterday, the Government published its policy paper ‘Fit For The Future: 10 Year Health Plan for England‘, which announced: [I]nvestment has to be accompanied by reform. The NHS has to be redesigned around the needs of the patient. Local hospitals cannot be run from Whitehall. There will be a new relationship between the Department of […]
Health and defence emerged as the ‘biggest winners’ at the recent spending review, bagging big funding increases, at the expense of other departments that now face a 0.3% annual real terms cut. This was a deliberate choice by the Government, which has now bet everything on being able to deliver improvements in the NHS before […]
Compare for a moment the National Health Service to a theoretical, dysfunctional state-run bistro. It has been poorly managed and undermanaged for years. The kitchen equipment is outdated and frequently fails to work, causing endless delays and frustration for both customers and staff. Successive governments have responded by hiring more waiters and cooks, but this […]
As if banning smoking in almost every public place wasn’t enough for the paternalists, Lord Faulkner has now put down an amendment to ban that last bastion of smokers’ freedom: the cigar lounge. This is a gross violation of private property and yet another blow to Britain’s hospitality industry. The main argument favouring the 2007 […]
On May 13, in what was meant to be a curtain-raiser for World No Tobacco Day, the World Health Organisation (WHO) hosted a webinar entitled ‘Exposing Lies, Protecting Lives: Unmask the Appeal of Tobacco and Nicotine Products’. What it actually unmasked was how committed the WHO remains to conflating science with ideology, and to undermining […]
In 2024, the then Conservative government agreed to a host of recommendations contained in the hard-hitting cross-party parliamentary report on birth trauma led by myself and Rosie Duffield MP. It was called: ‘Listen to Mums: ending the postcode lottery on perinatal care’. Sadly, one year on from the publication we find this Labour government has […]
Every year, promising medical trials fail to happen – not because the science is flawed, or because the regulators object, but because no one will pay for them. Potentially life-saving or life-improving treatments never leave the drawing board. The result is silent, systemic failure – invisible to the public but painfully obvious to the patients […]
It has become traditional to see stories over the winter months about the NHS in crisis. In a bleak new development, stories of institutional collapse in our healthcare system are emerging as a regular feature of early spring as well. This year – in a repeat of last year – there is huge frustration among […]
NHS abolition was not on my bingo sheet for Keir Starmer’s Government. But here we are. A political earthquake. Kissinger has gone to China. The party most closely associated with Britain’s healthcare system are the ones who finally be replacing it with a much more successful European-style social insurance system. Finally, fewer Britons will die […]
Statistics may be dull, but they serve an important role as the enemy of public health zealots. These killjoys often believe that even just one person being harmed is enough to justify any number of bans, even when the most basic of calculations can challenge them. Recently, I was invited onto BBC Sunday Morning Live […]
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