2:00

Soaring rhetoric aside, COVID had

2:02

overwhelmed the NHS. With

2:04

the death toll across the UK

2:06

from COVID-19, now more

2:08

than 43,000. In

2:11

fact, the UK was seeing, by far,

2:13

the highest death toll in Europe. Boris

2:22

Johnson was Prime Minister during one of

2:24

the most terrifying and deadly periods in

2:27

British history. Far deadlier than the German

2:29

bombing raids during World War II. It's

2:36

easy to blame Boris Johnson for the high

2:39

death toll, and many people do. They

2:41

say that he waited too long

2:43

before putting the country in lockdown

2:45

and then relaxed restrictions too early.

2:48

His decision to attend office parties while

2:51

the British public was confined to their

2:53

homes makes it particularly easy to

2:55

hang the blame around his neck. But

2:58

I don't think that is

3:00

the whole story. The reality

3:02

is, the NHS, the

3:04

thing that Johnson called Britain's

3:06

greatest national asset, was already

3:09

in crisis before the first

3:11

COVID patient arrived in England.

3:14

By many, many metrics, the

3:16

NHS was deeply, deeply broken.

3:19

And that's not Boris Johnson's fault. In

3:22

fact, he was trying to fix it. Today,

3:25

the story of how Britain's

3:27

beloved NHS fell into disrepair,

3:30

leaving it on the edge of collapse

3:33

as a catastrophe hit. I'm

3:35

Matt Bevan, and from If You're Listening, this

3:38

is Who Broke Britain. With

3:52

polls indicating that Labor is headed

3:54

towards a landslide victory next week,

3:56

it's worth looking back at the

3:58

first-ever Labor election. Slowly

6:00

the model of it all struck home. Labour

6:02

Landslide. After

6:06

the Labour Landslide in 1945, Bevan

6:09

was surprisingly added to the Cabinet

6:11

as Health Minister. Some

6:13

speculate that the leaders thought it was better

6:15

to have him inside the castle rather than

6:17

firing a cannon at it from the outside.

6:20

At the time, the British health system was a

6:23

bit of a mess. Hospitals were built

6:25

haphazard, according to the varying foresight

6:27

and resources of many different authorities,

6:29

with extremely patchy results. Some

6:32

hospitals were run by charities, some

6:34

were run by local governments, some

6:36

were run by insurance companies. And

6:38

this meant that richer parts of

6:40

the country got far better care

6:42

than poorer parts. Some places were

6:44

well off for hospitals. Others

6:46

were unlucky. Nye Bevan was handed a

6:49

blank check to fix this, basically a

6:51

socialist stream. And

6:53

I wanted therefore to use the

6:56

National Health Service as an instrument

6:58

for the redistribution of a national

7:00

income. His proposal was extraordinary. All

7:08

of Britain's hospitals would be nationalised and

7:10

come under the control of the Health

7:12

Minister. Every doctor in the country would

7:14

become a government employee and draw a

7:16

salary. Using around 5% of

7:19

the government budget, healthcare would become

7:21

free for everyone in Britain. Not

7:23

just taxpayers, not just British

7:26

citizens, everyone. The new

7:28

health service would cover all this.

7:31

There was massive opposition to this from

7:33

doctors, specialists and hospitals, who up until

7:35

this point were all their own bosses.

7:38

But with a combination of throwing money

7:40

at them, steamrolling them and compromising with

7:42

them, Bevan brought them around.

7:44

And there is nowhere in any nation in

7:47

the world, communist

7:49

or capitalist, any

7:51

health service to compare with it. The scheme would

7:53

kick in on 5 July 1948. Bevan

7:58

was on the verge of becoming a national... have

10:00

been rising in parallel since the 1970s. Britain's

10:04

median age, Britain's

10:06

life expectancy, and the

10:08

cost of the NHS. But

10:10

in 2010, two of those things changed. David

10:16

Cameron had intimate experience with

10:18

the NHS. His

10:20

eldest son Ivan was born with cerebral

10:22

palsy and a form of severe epilepsy,

10:25

and needed round-the-clock care and

10:27

frequent hospital visits. But

10:29

when your family relies

10:31

on the NHS, day

10:34

after day, you realise

10:37

just how precious it really is. In

10:40

2009, Ivan died at the age of six. When

10:43

such a big part of your life suddenly

10:45

ends, nothing

10:47

else, nothing outside

10:50

matters at all. Throughout the

10:52

2010 election campaign, his message to

10:54

voters was that he understood the

10:56

importance of the NHS, and

10:59

he could be trusted with it. When

11:01

elected, he promised to isolate the

11:03

NHS from the austerity programme that

11:05

he was rolling out across Britain.

11:07

We said five years ago, we

11:09

were the party of the NHS.

11:12

And now in government, by protecting

11:14

the NHS from spending cuts, we

11:16

are showing precisely that priority we've

11:18

talked about so much in our

11:20

party. And

11:24

that's true. The NHS budget

11:26

did not decrease. Instead, it

11:29

flatlined. But the

11:31

need for NHS services didn't

11:33

flatline. Britain's ageing

11:35

population meant that more doctors, nurses,

11:38

and funding was needed every year

11:40

to maintain the same quality of

11:42

care. Waiting lists

11:44

began to grow. Overworked

11:47

staff began quitting, and the NHS was

11:49

unable to find replacements for them. The

11:52

Labour Party began to attack Cameron for

11:55

creating a crisis in the NHS. emergency

12:00

units. We're missing the targets for cancer

12:02

treatment for the first time ever. And

12:05

to add to that, we had a tent,

12:07

a tent erected in a hospital car park

12:09

to treat people in 2015 in our

12:11

United Kingdom. Cameron angrily denied it. I'm someone

12:13

who knows what it's like when you go

12:15

to hospital night after night with a sick

12:18

child in your arms, knowing that when you

12:20

get there, there were people who will love

12:22

that child and care for that

12:24

child just as like it was their own. And

12:26

how dare they suggest I would ever put that

12:28

at risk for other people's children. But the

12:30

figures speak for themselves. The

12:32

median waiting time in English emergency rooms

12:34

went from two hours and nine minutes

12:36

in 2011 to two hours and

12:38

55 minutes in 2019. The length of

12:43

time that cancer patients had to

12:45

wait from diagnosis to treatment increased

12:47

significantly. And for the first

12:49

time in modern British history, life

12:52

expectancy stopped going up. In

12:55

fact, for Britain's poorest people, particularly

12:57

poor women, it began

12:59

to go down. Surprisingly,

13:01

the person inside the Conservative Party who

13:04

seemed most aware of the situation was

13:07

Boris Johnson. In

13:17

September 2019, Omar Salem was in

13:19

a hospital in East London. He

13:22

had brought in his seven-day old daughter

13:24

who had been admitted through the emergency

13:26

room. Once they arrived

13:29

on the ward, Omar says that he

13:31

had to wait for hours before a

13:33

doctor was available to see his daughter.

13:36

Omar Salem, who just so happened to

13:38

be a Labour activist, was livid about

13:40

this. He knew that the staff were

13:42

doing their best, but there just weren't

13:44

enough of them. Then, as

13:46

he was standing outside

13:48

his daughter's room, who should wander

13:50

by but Prime Minister Boris Johnson

13:53

and a camera crew. Owen

14:00

was in man of the people mode,

14:02

with no jacket on, his tie tucked

14:04

in between his shirt buttons and his

14:06

hair extra messy. It was a ward

14:08

primarily for elderly people. He was

14:10

there to hobnob with the doctors, nurses and

14:13

patients. Omar

14:15

started walking beside him. My daughter

14:17

nearly died. My daughter nearly died,

14:19

he said. Then he

14:21

turned, looked the Prime Minister in the face

14:23

and let him have it. There are not

14:26

enough people on this ward. There are

14:28

not enough doctors, there are not enough nurses. The

14:30

NHS has to be destroyed. It's

14:33

been destroyed. It's been destroyed.

14:36

And now you come here for a press

14:38

opportunity. In a rather strange turn

14:41

of events, Johnson said while standing quite close

14:43

to a film crew with

14:45

camera shutters snapping. Actually, there's no press

14:47

here. What do you mean there's no

14:50

press here? Who are these people? Johnson

14:52

said, we're actually here to find out

14:54

what we can do. Omar

14:58

told him it was too late. Well, that's

15:00

not going to fit things out a bit

15:02

late, isn't it? He was right.

15:05

It was a bit late. But then

15:07

Boris Johnson did at least understand that

15:10

the NHS needed money urgently.

15:14

For years, he had been demanding increases

15:17

in NHS funding, often as a way

15:19

to wedge his opponents inside the Conservative

15:21

Party and further his campaign to become

15:24

the Prime Minister. By the time he

15:26

was ambushed by Omar Salem in the

15:28

East London Hospital, his government had

15:34

laid out a plan to boost

15:36

NHS funding. So we are doing

15:39

20 new hospital upgrades in addition

15:41

to the 34 billion

15:43

more going into the NHS. But

15:45

as Omar said, it was too late. The

15:48

NHS was in a state of crisis

15:50

right as the pandemic struck. Three

15:54

days before the first anniversary of

15:56

Britain's first COVID case, Boris

15:58

Johnson made a... grave announcement. I'm

16:01

sorry to have to tell you

16:03

that today, the number of

16:05

deaths recorded from COVID in

16:07

the UK has surpassed 100,000. Life

16:10

expectancy, stagnant for a decade, actually

16:12

began to go backwards for the

16:15

entire population, thanks to COVID.

16:18

For the first year and a half

16:20

of the pandemic, the UK had the

16:22

highest COVID death toll of any major

16:24

economy. Right

16:31

now, there is a massive inquiry underway

16:34

into how the British government handled COVID-19.

16:37

Boris Johnson and David Cameron have both

16:39

given evidence. Johnson quibbled

16:42

with the lawyers over the death

16:44

toll. I'm putting to you some

16:46

cold steel of evidence. I don't

16:48

believe that your evidence stacks up.

16:51

And David Cameron flat-out denied that

16:53

his austerity measures contributed to the

16:55

NHS's poor performance during the pandemic.

16:58

Do you accept, Mr Cameron, that the

17:00

health budgets over the time of your

17:02

government were inadequate and led

17:05

to a depletion in its ability

17:07

to provide an adequate service? I

17:10

don't accept that. He said that

17:13

austerity cuts were essential. We'll

17:15

see what the inquiry says. But essential

17:18

is a matter of perspective. For

17:20

75 years, Britons have been adamant

17:23

that a well-functioning NHS is

17:25

essential. And that's

17:28

something that the government hasn't been able to

17:30

give them. If

17:42

You Listening is written by me, Matt

17:44

Bevin. Series producer is Yasmin Perry. Audio

17:46

production by Anna John. By

17:49

the way, Nye Bevin is having a

17:51

bit of a moment right now. The

17:53

National Theatre in London and the Wales

17:56

Millennium Centre in Cardiff have produced a

17:58

play about him called Nye.