No good saying NHS is ‘broken’

• I HAVE to disagree with some of Hampstead and Highgate MP Tulip Siddiq’ letter (We’re working for a 10-year plan for NHS, October 3), and I find what she has written unhelpful and even ideological.

Ever since the National Health Service was founded there has been a hard core of Tories bitterly against its creation.

And to keep saying it “is broken” as a sort of get-out mantra just feeds those Tories who want it broken.

The trouble with slogans is they become the excuse for failure on all political sides.

It is not true that the entire NHS is “broken.

Parts of it are in a very bad way, and the Tory extremists may well have made sure it would fail; but every part, each hospital in each area of that part, of Britain, is different.

Each department in each hospital is different.

Some are brilliantly managed on very little. Others are so bad no amount of extra funding does much good.

What does a great deal of harm is automatic thinking and the constant stirring up of insidious fear.

I am sure patients and the people working with the NHS do not want constant reminders that where they work is “broken”.

What they want is excellent, sure-footed, management, decent funding, clear principles and not “to be used” by politicians trying to get votes by ideology.

My own experiences of the NHS and those of others I have met across London has been that it is excellent.

With all the negative media this has been a surprise.

This year I have twice been in hospital and the care was exceptional as has been that of my GP practice and the pharmacies I have used.

Thanks to the Covid-19 crisis and the strikes, I now know how hard medical care is, how demanding and how much it depends on cooperation and sure direction, plus goodwill from the patients.

What is needed now is to recognise what is working and build on it strongly.

And, remember, health may be deteriorating due to fears of an ugly future and the outdated ways of managing this city and its housing by all governments.

LIZ JELLINEK, NW3