I was dismayed the furore in August over Dan Hannan’s comments about the NHS on America’s Fox TV. There was no sensible discussion about securing changes and improvements to the NHS, just yah, boo, sucks political discourse.

We all have experience of the wonders of modern healthcare as much as we’ve bumped up against it’s bureaucracy. Any organisation than employs over 1.3 million people is bound to suffer from some inefficiencies. [Note: the NHS is the third largest employer in the world]

I imagine the need to secure efficiency savings in the NHS was the reason the Labour government commissioned a report from management consultants, McKinsey and Company. Now that this report has become public the government says, shock, horror, this is not what we asked for, according to Mike O’Brien, a health minister. ”Ministers have rejected the suggested proposals in the McKinsey report and there are no plans to adopt these proposals in the future.”

I’d be interested to see the terms of reference, and the conversations between government and McKinsey’s while they were compiling their report. Top ranking strategy consultants don’t work in isolation, they always like to interact with the most senior people possible. Government, just like any organisation, is capable of bringing the report to a halt at any time, if it thinks the likely conclusions won’t be to their liking.

Here’s what Sir Gerry Robinson, the businessman who presented a BBC series about the NHS, said,

“You wonder at the mindset behind getting a report like that and then saying because it is not politically acceptable, we are not actually going to do anything with it,”

This is typical hollow pretence of Labour. It’s double dealing to say, “not us, gov, we don’t agree with the findings.” Shameful, the NHS deserves better.