Spectator letters: A GP’s cry of distress and a defence of Stephen Hawking

Dreadful treatment

Sir: I worked as a GP through the Thatcher, Major, Blair, and Brown eras, apart from a spell as an A&E doctor, and never experienced such a depressing and worrying time for the NHS as now (‘Wrong diagnosis’, 10 January). There was frequently strain on the service from underfunding, but not the crisis we are now experiencing across the country, proving to me fundamental mismanagement and policy errors.

When this government finally revealed its NHS ‘reforms’, which were kept quiet before the 2010 election, I was convinced the health service was under great threat, and that the electorate was being deviously misled. This crisis was predicted in the risk register, which Andrew Lansley refused to publish. It is a direct result of the cuts, closures, mergers, reduction in beds, insufficient staff and chaotic management; above all, it is the result of those in charge knowing the cost of everything but the value of nothing. They have been driven by the misguided ideology of marketisation. A study from Keele University estimates that £10 billion a year is wasted — enough to adequately plug the funding gap.

The NHS has been chronically underfunded since 1948, but I have never before thought those in charge wanted to destroy it. If this government is given another term, it will be able to finish the job. The great British public must wake up to what they are about to lose.
Dr Paul Hobday

Tonbridge, Kent

Sneaks on the line

Sir: Matthew Parris worries that we have all turned into sneaks (10 January). I enjoy Graham Norton as well, both as an agony aunt in print and on the radio; but I suspect that the ‘holier than thou’ reaction about whether or not to report to the police someone who has had too much to drink at a dinner party is due more to the type of person who phones in.