The breast cancer screening scandal shows that to heal the NHS, we must wrench it from the deadly grip of politicians

IN 2011, I stood holding my newborn son — an hour old — as my wife spasmed on the scuffed floor of the birthing room.

Her eyes were rolled back in her head; there was blood everywhere.

The midwife blindly ran to the wall and pressed a button. Two minutes later, a whole team of doctors poured in, moving all non- essential ­figures (me especially) to one side.

I leaned against a cold wall murmuring nothings to my heedless son.
Doctors prodded, set up drips — my wife was still lifeless before me.

Then, slowly, the panic in the room subsided. My wife opened her eyes and smiled faintly. My son started pawing at my body with his mouth, the instinct for feeding stirring.

As my wife was stretchered away, I pushed through the crowd and plopped him on her chest, where he latched on to her, simultaneously seeming to take life from her and give it straight back.

Later, the bleeding stopped and my wife could speak again. I could leave the hospital knowing that her life had been saved.

I returned the next morning to find her lying in bed, surrounded by bloodied cloths and tissues. She had not eaten since the birth. She could scarcely be understood by a succession of nursing and auxiliary staff.

Nobody had helped her get clean. I could not, in conscience, leave her there. We went home.

The truth is that while the hospital could cure her, they were not able to care for her.

I have also needed the NHS to help me when I slipped into a coma as a three-year-old, for three broken bones, a head wound and the birth of my daughter.

My uncle, a former smoker, had half his face removed and rebuilt to treat a tumour, an operation costing tens of thousands for which he never had to pay a penny.

My grandfather died of Parkinson’s, shipped to a hospital from the foul stenches of a nursing home.

Two other grandparents succumbed to MRSA in hospital.

First things and last things: Always the NHS.

I tell these stories not because they are exceptional but because they are not.

Virtually everyone in this country owes their life to the doctors, nurses and staff of our National Health Service.

But it is for that reason that it is almost impossible to be objective about it.

Nigel Lawson, the former Conservative chancellor, once said: “The NHS is the closest thing the English have to a ­religion. This made it extraordinarily ­difficult to reform.” He was — for once — not wrong. How can we examine the NHS rationally, and consider its parlous future, while still recognising both its actual and symbolic significance to the country?

The answer is that we can’t, and we don’t.

The NHS was created by a Liberal, ­William Beveridge, and Labour’s Aneurin Bevan in 1948, born from the mess of wartime Britain.

Ever since, it has always had one ­simple problem. It is funded nationally, but experienced locally. It is too big a bureaucracy.

The six restructures by Tory and ­Labour governments over the past 70 years have not fixed it.

And when we look at scandals such as the 450,000 women who missed breast cancer screenings over the past decade, we are reminded of the human cost of that.

Some truths remain whoever is in ­government. We are living longer, fatter, unhealthier lives. Two thirds of people admitted to hospital are over 65, with a growing list of needs.

And three major surveys in the past few decades have shown if you are poor, you get poorer treatment.

The time will come when a cash influx and savings drive will not alter a basic truth: Demand will always expand, ­pressure will always grow once more, the less well-off will suffer.

And either we put up with that, or we have to look again.

That might even mean considering what we can learn from other systems such as Holland and Germany, where compulsory health ­insurance, supported by government, means people value their healthcare because they contribute directly to the cost of its upkeep.

To have any proper debate, the NHS must be depoliticised.

It should be taken out of the hands of politicians and their vote-grubbing dependence on a five-year cycle of ­misinformation and manipulation.

We need to stop the political weapon- isation of healthcare.

Place the future of the health system into the hands of an independent ­commission of health professionals and cross-party politicians, capable of massive structural change, which can plan not simply to survive next winter, or next election, but the next decades of our ­national destiny.

It will need to look at what, in the 21st Century, a free health service can achieve and what it cannot.

It must ensure that social care — that desperately vital aspect of ensuring the dwindling years of a person’s life are supported with diligence and dignity — is recognised as part of the overall health system, and funded.

At the same time, we must find a way to demand that personal responsibility for our own wellbeing is rendered truly part of the social contract.

The NHS is a wonderful religion, a ­beautiful idea born out of the utmost ­ugliness of war and want.

Unless we act boldly, it may not be the future for an ageing, wobbling nation, ­however much we believe, however hard we fight.

• This article is adapted from How Britain Really Works: Understanding The Ideas And Institutions Of A Nation, by Stig Abell, which is out now.