NHS Health Check

The NHS has grown fat. Bloated on the tens of billions it has ingested over the last six years, the health service, in keeping with the rest of society, has exercised little to justify its mammoth intake. This is not something that has passed the Government by, however. According to Polly Toynbee and David Walker in their book Better or Worse, former health secretary John Reid nearly had "an attack of apoplexy" in October 2004 when the Office for National Statistics found that productivity in the NHS had fallen despite the spending increases. In the same year it was estimated that the N...