Ex-NHS Chief calls on government to 'declare health and care emergency' as 'Blitz spirit' needed to tackle crisis
5 March 2025, 20:13 | Updated: 5 March 2025, 21:18
Former NHS Chief Lord Nigel Crisp has called on the government to 'declare a health and care emergency'.
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Speaking on LBC's Tonight with Andrew Marr, Lord Crisp said "Blitz spirit" could help save the NHS.
He said there needed to be a move away from "the hook of waiting lists", with social and community care needing to be improved first.
Asked if it will take years to build community hubs that will take the pressure off NHS hospitals, Lord Crisp said: "Certainly that is true at the macro scale, but there's a lot of things that you can build on.
"My feeling, and particularly with this extra pressure of money now, I and some colleagues at the end of last year, had an editorial in the BMJ which said the government should declare a national health and care emergency and get people together to solve this problem.
Andrew Marr speaks to Lord Nigel Crisp | Watch Again
"If you go out to the country and you know that a lot of the problems come from poor housing, you know that problems come from under employment and unemployment and a crumbling care sector.
"And an awful lot the NHS does is pick up the pieces from elsewhere. It didn't cause the obesity; it didn't cause the mental illness and so on.
"So actually, I think there's a moment here, if we're into a sort of slightly Blitz spirit... for the government to be saying we should declare a health and care emergency and get people together to think about how you can solve it, because the government's not going to solve this by themselves."
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Lord Crisp said there would be a need for more money to help solve the NHS' problems, but there are also issues with productivity.
"It's not just that people aren't willing or that people are tired," he said. "From my observation, it's actually the system is put under such pressure by where we are.
"We've been in a downward spiral and we've got to start moving up the spiral, and we've got it in a way, I don't mean this quite like this, but to get off the hook of waiting lists.
"It can't all be about waiting lists, because the only way you'll get waiting lists down sustainably is by improving social and community and primary care. And I think there's a lot that could be done.
"I'm hoping that this is where the government will go in May or June, or whenever it produces its NHS plan, that it will take a steered direction in a slightly different way and say this is a time when we've got to reforge the NHS in a different sort of way."
