2nd September 2025

10 Year Plan: No plan for emergency care
Campaigner Greg Dropkin takes the plan to task “yes there’s a deep crisis in emergency care, but [it] fails to address its causes.” For example “Inpatient beds are unavailable because patients who are medically fit for discharge cannot be discharged safely due to lack of social care.” And he reveals other unaddressed causes.

10 Year Plan: a repeat of Darzi centres?
The Health Foundation says Neighbourhood Health Centres are very similar to Labour’s ‘Darzi centre’ or ‘polyclinic’ projects from the 2000s. The ambition of Darzi centres was well received, but in practice they faced a number of challenges: specifically unnecessary duplication with other local services and questions about cost-effectiveness.

Student nurse fears for an NHS job
A student midwife fears she will be unable to get a job after completing 2,300 hours of unpaid placement work. Why oh why? Also, vacancies would disappear if we cancelled student debt after years of service. Why ever not instigate this?

Are these people fit to run our NHS?
Here is a list of recent appointments to the boards of the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England. Are they fit and proper people to support the founding principles of the NHS, that it is publicly-run and free of the taint of private profit? In whose interests will they work?