Wes Streeting has ordered an independent investigation into health service performance. But is this NHS review to provide an excuse for privatisation?

The Labour health secretary announced the decision on the day waiting lists were found to have risen to 7.6 million – lower than their height but above last month’s total.

He said the review would inform his forthcoming 10-year plan for the NHS. Sadly, the place in which he said this was The Sun newspaper, which suggests that he’s planning something highly right-wing and commercialised. An excuse for more privatisation, perhaps?

He said the health service could be restored – but first he needed to “diagnose the problem”.

This is odd, because we’ve all been diagnosing the problem merrily since the Tories took over responsibility for the NHS back in 2010.

It is starvation of funds, leading to a loss of staff and equipment – most clearly caused by the diversion of those funds into private businesses.

There you go; I’ve just saved Lord Ara Darzi (who’s chairing the review) a lot of work, but I dare say he’ll do it anyway – and find a different conclusion.

If he does, we’ll all have reason to be suspicious.

It’s all very strange because the corrective plan is already public knowledge: “Cut NHS waiting times with 40,000 more appointments a week by paying staff more to work weekends and evenings.”

Knowing that, it seems Streeting’s decision is highly suspicious already.

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