In a recent speech health secretary Alan Johnson quoted his illustrious predecessor Aneurin Bevan, the post-war founder of the NHS, who famously declared his objective that ‘if a bedpan is dropped on a hospital floor in Tredegar (his South Wales constituency), its noise should resound in the Palace of Westminster’. Johnson bemoaned the ‘monolithic centralism’ that developed over subsequent decades, apparently oblivious to the consolidation of this monolith over 10 years of New Labour. The deployment of bedpans in every hospital in the country is now the sort of NHS activity that is governed by some target or performance indicator accessible to any ‘choose and book’ customer.
Whereas Bevan faced fierce medical and political opposition, Johnson faces little resistance to his drive to regulate the …