TIME OUT

Political watchers of even tender years will doubtless remember when 'choice' was the top Wetsminster mantra. 'Choice' - in the NHS, for example - was what everyone evidently wanted, a choice of hospital, consultant, or GP. Then it became apparent that most people did not actually want choice. What they wanted more than anything were top-class facilities close to home. So instead of 'choice,' the mantra was changed to 'privatisation.'
Now in my book, and again relating to the NHS, 'privatisation' is as dodgy a label as 'choice' or 'PFI.' None have been howling successes, and indeed, it is not too difficult to make out a case that they have been disasters. Most privatised services, from nursing homes to medical and social services, seem to run with minimum numbers of staff earning minimal wages, with the profits going to the shareholders.
So it was no surprise to hear during the last General Election that the top mantra had changed once more, this time to 'hard-working families.' Something designed, no doubt, to take the microscope of bad publicity away from choice and PFI and privatisation.
Meanwhile, the poor old NHS stumbles on, doing its best despite the interference of politicians, coping with increasing demands for its services, and monetary limitations and squeezes. Mind you, various solutions have been promised, including injections of extra cash and other knee-jerk suggestions. But none of this, it seems to me, actually fits the bill.
It has been general knowledge for several decades that the average ages of the population at large were increasing and that there would be a tidal wave of elderly people seeking care and treatments at some point in the future. Say, around 2015? And yet when Norwich's new University hospital was in the planning stage the original idea was still to close two old hospitals and build a new one containing even fewer beds than the previous pair put together.
So what was actually put in motion, decades ago, to plan for this deluge? Not a lot as far as I can see. And yet this is what the NHS needs most of all : not knee-jerk responses, but long-term planning. And this is also where the difficulties really start.
A new Government is elected for a five-year spell. It will often spend the first few months sorting itself out, and the final 12 months preparing for the next election, leaving a space of about three years in the middle in which to fomulate plans and put them into operation. And if the Opposition, with an entirely different approach, actually win the next Election, then all those three-year plans will have been wasted, anyway.
Surely something as large and complicated and vital as the NHS needs at least a 15-year plan, subject to checks and balances as time passes and in light of new discoveries and techniques. You could only do this, however, by taking the NHS out of the political arena and working with some sort of political consensus.
So lets have consensus on the NHS. Take it out of the bear-pit of Westminster politics and put it into the hands of people given a mandate to formulate and initiate long-term strategies. And if the system worked, how about taking education out of the political arena, too?
Come to think of it, if further powers are to be devolved to major cities, and if the NHS and education were being run from elsewhere sensibly and successfully, would there actually be anything for Westminster to do?