The NHS has survived many Conservative governments which, according to their opponents, were out to privatise it. But can it survive a growing disenchantment on the part of young professionals who are turned off by the idea of having to queue for healthcare?
According to the Independent Healthcare Provider Network (IHPN) – admittedly not an entirely disinterested party – the largest growth in the private health sector is among young professionals in their 20s, 30s and 40s, who want rapid scans and other diagnostic tests without the wait. As the organisation’s chief executive, David Hare, puts it, these are people ‘who are accustomed to high quality, convenient and personalised services in many other aspects of their lives’, and who don’t see why healthcare should be any different. When you have grown up being able to order taxis, book airline flights, have lunch delivered to your desk, all with a few swipes on a smartphone, the idea of waiting several weeks for an appointment – and then having little choice as to when that appointment is held – holds little appeal.
The political power of spreading the fear of a ‘privatised NHS’ may be losing its bite
This might all seem at odds with the assertion that the young are becoming more left-wing – with the tendency to vote Labour increasing steadily as you go down the age scale. But the claim by the IHPN fits in with the latest edition of the National Centre for Social Research’s Social Attitudes Survey, published a fortnight ago, which found that faith in the NHS is falling most rapidly among young people. The survey showed an alarming drop in people who say they are satisfied with the NHS – down to just 20 per cent, compared with 60 per cent in 2012, the year when the opening ceremony of the London Olympics incorporated real-life nurses bouncing on NHS beds. Most of the fall has occurred since the pandemic. Yet among the over-65s, satisfaction with the NHS actually rose a little last year – it was only among young people where it is cratering.
It is a sign that the health service can no longer count on being carried along on a sense of national pride or communitarian spirit. Ironically, that is something which seems to be alive more among Tory-voting septuagenarians than among Labour-voting twenty-somethings. If you are old enough to remember relatives who succumbed to polio or tuberculosis, no doubt you are more inclined to appreciate the step-change in accessibility to healthcare which came with the founding of the NHS, and therefore to forgive the health service for its current failings. It is another matter if you are of a generation which is more remote from the pre-NHS era.
None of this is to say that the principle of public healthcare which is mostly free on the point of delivery does not continue to enjoy wide public support. But the idea of how that healthcare should be provided is shifting. Opinion is hardening against the idea, popular with the unions, that the NHS should be a state monolith which never uses private providers.
One YouGov poll which has been conducted regularly since 2019 is instructive on this. It gives people three options: should the NHS never use private providers, should it use a mixture of its own facilities together with private ones, or should all hospitals and clinics be privatised, with the NHS reduced to a mere buyer of services. In the most recent survey, 63 per cent went for the middle option, 23 per cent for the first and 3 per cent for the third. The gap has widened significantly since 2019, when 30 per cent wanted the NHS to be a state monolith and 56 per cent wanted a mixture of public and private provision. Most of that change has occurred in the past couple of years, since the NHS strikes.
It suggests that the political power of spreading the fear of a ‘privatised NHS’ may be losing its bite, and young people may be leading the way on this. Wes Streeting, who has spoken of more private provision, just as Tony Blair did with his independent sector treatment centres, may well have his finger on the public pulse.
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