The conventional wisdom is that any of the NHS’s shortcomings, including the current “crisis”, are the result of “underfunding”. We are told that the service is unable to cope with rising demand because it is being “starved of funds”, either deliberately (because the Government harbours “secret plans” to privatise it), or as a side-effect of “austerity”.

It is true that as far as Western health systems go, the NHS is on the low-spending side. The UK spends just under 10 per cent of GDP on health care, compared with more than 11 per cent in Sweden, Germany, Japan and Switzerland (not to mention the US, which is in a league of its own). Healthcare spending in France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, Austria and Canada also exceeds 10 per cent of GDP.

But these are aggregate figures. If we look specifically at spending on the hospital sector, the UK is about in line with the OECD average. We spend just under 4 per cent of GDP on hospital care, which is less than in France, Sweden and Switzerland, but more than in Germany, Finland and Canada, and about the same as in the Netherlands and Spain.

This is, of course, still a high level of aggregation, and more detailed breakdowns are hard to come by. But presumably, the differences in spending on the most essential aspects of care – including A&E – are even narrower. Let’s put it this way: a rich person does not necessarily spend more on bread, butter and milk than a poor person; they spend more on dining out, fancy clothes and foreign holidays. It is the same with health systems.