Another winter, another NHS crisis. With operations cancelled and ambulances queueing outside hospitals, the prime minister has already been forced to apologise to patients. Last week 68 consultants in charge of accident and emergency departments warned that people were dying “prematurely” in corridors because beds are full. Medical students are being asked to fill the staffing gaps. This is not just “shroud-waving” by health professionals or scaremongering by opposition MPs, but the result of a genuine demographic change.

The NHS crisis is really a social care crisis, created by an ageing population and exacerbated by government cuts. Although health service budgets have been ring-fenced since 2010, there has been a £6 billion reduction in spending on social care and an entirely related 50 per cent