Last week, Professor Lord Darzi published his shocking independent report on the state of the NHS in England. He warned that the NHS is in a "critical condition" after a decade of austerity, a prolonged lack of capital investment and the impact of Covid. In addition, many healthcare workers are disillusioned, burnt out and still traumatized from the pandemic, whilst our society is becoming sicker, and demand is growing faster than it can be met.
But the NHS already spends a huge amount of public money. This year its budget is an eye watering £165 billion and Keir Starmer has made clear that more funding will not simply be poured in without reform. He has identified the importance of going digital, moving more care out of hospitals into local communities, and focusing on prevention of poor health as well as treatment. In the words of the King's Fund think tank, "the task is not simply to prop the NHS back up. It is to create a new approach to health and care in this country."
In the UK we take pride in a system that is taxpayer funded, free at the point of use and based on need rather than ability to pay. The NHS is supposed to be there for everyone, and there is a real desire for it to be pulled back to its feet. But the challenges we face severely test our ability to balance our duty to care for others with responsible stewardship of the nation's resources, in this case our taxes.
How might we view these challenges through a Christian lens? Christians have often been distinctive in their approaches. In Roman times they were noticed because they cared for the sick and dying from other communities, not just their own. And more recently, it was Christians who started the hospice movement to provide palliative care for those nearing the end of their lives.
Our deep desire should be to ensure that everyone – healthcare staff as well as patients – is treated with deep compassion, personal attention and the dignity that comes of being made in the image of God. Every single individual – incredibly, unchangeably – valuable beyond our comprehension.
This means that we also need to tackle 'sticky' issues such as social care, which successive governments have deemed too difficult to address, but which mean that more and more people are struggling to afford or access the services they need to live with long-term illnesses such as dementia.
But healthcare is not just about treating the sick. In the words of theologian Jürgen Moltmann, good health is about ensuring people have "the strength to be human".
Human value is often talked about in economic terms: ensuring that people are well enough to work and be 'productive' members of society. The Office for National Statistics estimates that nearly 3 million people of working age are 'economically inactive' due to long-term physical or mental sickness.
Lord Darzi has rightly pointed out that the nation's health is affected by wider social and economic problems such as poverty, poor nutrition, family breakdown, insecurity in employment and housing. The report says: "Many of the social determinants of health ... have moved in the wrong direction over the past 15 years with the result that the NHS has faced rising demand for healthcare from a society in distress."
The Beveridge Report of 1942 that was instrumental in the creation of Britain's welfare state laid out five giants that stalked the land: want, disease, ignorance, squalor, and idleness. Though the language is now out of date, the problems are not.
So when we think about the NHS we must also consider how we tackle these other factors, which may all be covered by different governmental departments and some by none.
And then there's that gut-wrenching phrase, "a society in distress". It can be hard to read these government reports without despairing for our nation. Grim statistics and bar charts trending towards misery soon become too much to bear.
There is a deep spiritual reality to the brokenness around us which we must take to God in prayer. Like the persistent widow to the judge in Jesus' parable in Luke 18, or indeed like some of the passionate lobbyists who fill my inbox, we should not back down, nor be disheartened in our prayers.
Countless people are feeling hopeless, lonely, and hungry. We know that the Church has a vital role to play in providing counter-culturally selfless love in community, but also in pointing them to the joy and hope that is found in the Gospel.
Tim Farron has been the Member of Parliament for Westmorland and Lonsdale since 2005, and served as the Leader of the Liberal Democrat Party from 2015 to 2017. Tim is also the host of Premier's A Mucky Business' podcast, which unpacks the murky world of politics and encourages believers around the UK to engage prayerfully. He is the author of A Mucky Business: Why Christians should get involved in politics.
