BBC Question Time Guest Says Brits Are 'Sick And Tired' Of Politicians Dealing With The NHS

A BBC Question Time guest slammed politicians for their handling of the NHS last night.

As the panel of MPs and broadcasters tried to address the question, “why does the NHS wait so long to treat people?”, a member of the audience suggested much of the problem came down to Westminster.

She said: “I think we’re all absolutely sick and tired of listening to you guys kick this back and forth, parliamentary term in, parliamentary term out.

“What I can’t get to grips with, is why do we never hear from the people running the NHS?”

The audience member referred to the NHS England’s chief executive, Amanda Pritchard, and asked why the public rarely get to hear from her.

She said: “How do we get to hear more from the people actually running it, [who] will probably still be there when you have all moved onto your reality TV shows or Strictly Come Dancing?”

Health secretary Wes Streeting, who sat on the panel, then tried to emphasise all of the ways Labour have improved the health service since they were elected in July.

But that soon descended into a political spat again, as Tory MP Nigel Huddleston interrupted to claim Labour had “scrapped” all the NHS plans the last government had in place.

Streeting hit back with his own line of attack, claiming: “You won’t even acknowledge the scale of the challenge of the NHS.”

He added that the last Labour government were able to say “unequivocally they were proud of their record”, adding: “Unfortunately our predecessors can’t say the same for theirs.”

Meanwhile, Lib Dem MP Christine Jardine told Question Time “we need to work cross-party”.

She said: “We need to stop arguing about the political side of it – and start talking about health. Getting the health service to people.”

She added: “Ideally none of us would have anything to do with [the NHS], it would be run by people who know about medicine and who don’t care about the politics.”