The government is promising to tackle the NHS backlog
Without proper workforce planning, it will fail
DAYS BEFORE a deadline for National Health Service frontline staff to get vaccinated against covid-19, the government started to waver. It scrapped its plans entirely on January 31st. If mandatory vaccination had gone ahead, hospitals would have had to sack an estimated 70,000 workers—some 5% of staff—in England alone. Although patients would be safer if those caring for them were all jabbed, the NHS is so understaffed that losing so many people would have been catastrophic.
This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “To infinity and beyond”
Britain February 5th 2022
- The British government’s “levelling up” plans are oddly old-fashioned
- A quixotic plan to roll back EU law
- Mike Lynch has lost Britain’s biggest fraud case
- The government is promising to tackle the NHS backlog
- The laws are being removed from Parliament
- Some British children have been changed by covid-19, probably for good
- Sue Gray delivers a first report on those Downing Street parties
From the February 5th 2022 edition
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