Member

Fourthly—this sits firmly at Opposition Members’ door, so they should sit and listen—there was the failure to reform. From 2019 onwards, the previous Government oversaw a 17% increase in the number of staff working in hospitals. Did it lead to better outcomes for patients? No. At great expense to the taxpayer, the NHS has instead seen a huge fall in productivity. We paid more but got less—a deplorable waste of resources when so many parts of our health and care services were crying out for investment. As Lord Darzi has put it: