The FT has an editorial today in which it discusses the NHS, saying:

The government cannot avoid responsibility for the present mess. The Treasury’s imposition of deep cuts in the provision for social care has had predictable consequences.

These, it says are:

The net effect of Whitehall myopia has been to save pennies while wasting pounds.

Wasn't it ever thus with supposed frugality imposed for dogmatic reasons?

Even more damning though is this:

The NHS has also had to manage the costly bureaucratic upheaval introduced after 2010 by David Cameron’s government. The changes fragmented provision at a cost of billions of pounds. They will have to be reversed if the NHS is to capture the productivity gains and savings available in an integrated system.

In 2010 David Cameron promised no top-down reorganisation of the NHS in one of the biggest lies ever told to an electorate until the Leave campaign came along. It has been a disaster. Premised on the idea of competition, and clearly intended to deliver privatisation, it has created enormous and costly waste that has simply served in increase NHS admin but not help the delivery of services.

The FT is right to say that the Cameron and Lansley reforms have to be reversed. Many of us said they would be a disaster at the time. We were right.