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Hello, I'm Sam Holmes and welcome to Spectator Out Loud. Every week, a few of our favorite

writers read their pieces from the latest issue. This week, we'll hear from Kate Andrews on the

NHS Waiting List crisis, Kevin Hurley, on the impact of demonizing the police force, and

Lawrence Bernstein on the secretive world of speech writing. First up, Kate Andrews.

Before the pandemic hit, NHS England waiting lists were at a record high of 4.4 million.

Three lockdowns later, they've risen to 6 million,

an unacceptable figure for a Tory government,

which has spent years trying to rebrand itself as the party of the NHS.

Boris Johnson's decision to break his manifesto pledge and raise taxes was directly linked to the idea that the money would first be funneled

into the health service to fix the backlog. So can he now deliver for patients? When health secretary

Satchad Javid announced his elective recovery plan in the House of Commons on Tuesday,

he said that the waiting list would start shrinking by March 24, though he stressed that the numbers

will rise before then. By how much? Estimates flowed around, but the NHS modeling has been kept under wraps.

The spectator has seen the models on which the recovery plans have been based.

The optimistic scenario shows that by March 2024, the waiting list was stand at 9.2 million,

falling to 8.5 million by 2025.

The downside scenario shows the list peaking at 10.7 million and easing to just 10.3 million

the following year. These are pretty depressing figures, especially for ministers only now realizing

how little the new tax levy, a 1.25 percentage point rise for both bosses and workers, will

achieve. Increasing national insurance was a huge

political gamble, sold on the premise that if the extra cash fixed the backlog, it would be worth it.

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