Jabbed. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)
The NHS is a highly centralised organisation. During the Covid crisis, policy decisions have been made at the top and then passed down. There has been little scope for showing initiative at a local level.
This dates back to when the NHS was set up in the late 1940s. Central planning was very fashionable at the time.
Yet as many have pointed out, no other Western health service has seen fit to copy the particular organisational structure of the NHS. There is, to varying degrees, more devolution of authority and decisions.
In normal times, the problems arising from a centralised, command-and-control system have become apparent over the years. Cancer survival rates, for example, are routinely lower in the UK than in other European health systems.