You know, I feel a smidgeon of sympathy for the Government. It’s not Sunak’s fault that the NHS finally collapsed on his watch. But the 8am Scramble, which our technocrat PM has identified as the glitch in the system that he has to fix, is merely a symptom of a terminal disease. Hanging on the telephone, being advised by an automated voice that you are now 17th in the queue, is annoying but it’s not the real issue. Getting through and being told to expect a phone consultation with a GP in two weeks’ time, and when the call comes you are always on the loo, is exasperating, but also not really the issue.  No, the issue is there aren’t enough doctors to take care of us.

“I’m actually speechless,” said one shattered GP when she heard about the Recovery plan. “What a crackpot idea. How does Sunak think this will help?”  

It’s also easy to get things wrong.  Recently, I was about to go abroad when I developed what I thought was a UTI. A pharmacist agreed with my self-diagnosis and I managed to get a private prescription for antibiotics before the flight. But the pain got worse and worse. Back in the UK, I dashed to a private GP who chided me for not consulting a doctor. I did not have a urinary tract infection. I had shingles.

Will pharmacists, also in short supply, really want to run the risk of prescribing antibiotics for a UTI which turns out to be shingles? Or even sepsis? Most likely, they will refer patients to a GP, just in case.

My seven-point plan

1. “Get rid of the vast amount of pointless form filling and data collection,” sighs one family doctor. “For every four-hour surgery, I then have to do two hours of paperwork or battle with the useless NHS IT system to make referrals online, an extraordinarily complex process.” This is a whole new byzantine layer of bureaucracy which seems designed to prevent patients getting a hospital appointment. Scrap it and allow GPs to contact consultants directly as they used to.   

2. Allow private GPs and consultants to access a patient’s NHS records. It’s absurd that our personal health data is jealously guarded by the state. And why do we need a GP referral before we can see a consultant? It’s a waste of a GP’s time. No other country has such a tiresome system.

3. Abolish GP revalidation. This onerous five-year hurdle, which includes five-yearly appraisals and 20 “approvals” by colleagues, was a typical bureaucratic over-reaction to the Harold Shipman scandal. It drives many good doctors into early retirement. It precludes retired GPs from acting as locums and helping out hard-pressed surgeries.

4.  Bring back the Waiting Room! The best and simplest form of triage; a willingness to sit for hours and wait your turn amidst a tsunami of snot is generally proof that a patient is unwell enough to see a doctor.

6. Sack 70 per cent of NHS managers (I guarantee no one will notice) and use the savings to train up thousands more nurse practitioners to assess patients before they proceed to see a GP.

7. Get control of immigration. “I regularly do whole surgeries when I don’t see a single British patient; they’re all from overseas and usually can’t speak English,” says one overwhelmed London GP. Net migration is predicted to rise to a record high of 675,000 (it was a mere 504,000 the year before), and we have a dire shortage of doctors. As Rishi is always urging us: do the maths.

It would be good to think our Government might at least try some of the above, and stop insulting us with gimmicks. How long before sick people are advised to see a vet?  Not a bad idea actually. The last time I needed to take Bingo to the vet, the phone was answered within seconds, an appointment made for the same afternoon, treatment given, wince-inducing payment made. Result: one happy cockapoo. When you’re jealous of your dog’s healthcare you know we’re in trouble.

I have no problem with the PM and his family using a private GP when in London. Why would you? The Sunaks are freeing up places desperately needed by others.

I am lucky enough to have seen a private GP myself. My first private appointment, with a doctor who has time to treat you as a person rather than a unit to be shunted along, was tinged with a kind of guilty sadness. This is how it used to be for everyone, I thought, remembering the GP who came to our house when I was eight years old and delirious with German measles. That is how it should be, but never is any more – unless you are rich.  

This may shock you Prime Minister, but, despite previous assurances, the exact opposite of giving patients and GPs power to access secondary care is now putting public safety at risk. Thanks to NHS England (20,000 non-clinical staff collating data and setting targets in offices nowhere near a hospital), ours is the most micro-managed health system of any major nation. Not only is there no “radical transparency”, there is institutional obfuscation and a horrible new obstacle course.

Unbelievably, for other specialties Dr Clare is not allowed to refer at all. She must email a department asking for “advice and guidance”. After a delay, which can be a couple of months or more, the person who responds “may have decided to send an appointment to my patient, but usually not”. Clare has had patients with cardiac symptoms rejected and been told to manage them in the community. Even if a patient eventually hits the jackpot and is approved to see a specialist, Clare points to a worrying new phenomenon: there is now a waiting list for the waiting list.

The correspondence I get every day from Telegraph readers bears that out. Hannah wrote to say she is trying to get her son referred for a hereditary problem which interferes with his eating and breathing. In September, the little boy was rushed to A&E where he saw a paediatrician who said his tonsils must come out immediately. Allegedly, Hannah’s son is now on an ENT urgent waiting list, but when she called recently she was told that an appointment would be coming out for a telephone consultation.

Hannah has been in this hellish limbo before with her elder son. “The consultant will ask me the same questions the paediatrician in A&E asked. We will then go on another waiting list for a face-to-face appointment. Next, we will join a waiting list for surgery. It will take 2.5 years till my son has his operation. But I can pay to see the same consultant privately next week.”

That two-tier system which the Labour party shrieks about is already here. By leaking the news that Rishi Sunak reportedly uses a private GP, critics of the Government hoped to incite public anger against our Prime Minister and his huge personal wealth. Instead, most people shrug and think “If I had his money, I’d go private like a shot”.

It’s a truism that governments think that reforming the NHS spells electoral disaster. That gives NHS management almost unlimited power. You could sense that in the way Jeremy Hunt used his otherwise abstemious Autumn Statement to bung the health service another £6 billion, over two years, with no conditions attached. The Chancellor added nervously that Amanda Pritchard, the chief executive of NHS England, had deemed it “sufficient”.

It is absurd that an organisation which is performing so catastrophically badly should continue to merit such kid-glove treatment. The public is wising up to the almost criminal level of delusion. How is “our NHS” simultaneously “the envy of the world” yet always “10 days away from collapse”? Why are our cancer survival figures so wretched compared to comparable countries?

 Here are a few suggestions:

1. Please stop calling it “our NHS” as if it commands popular affection. Hundreds of people are needlessly dying every week because the NHS is failing them.

2. Too many of the NHS’s 1.2 million workforce make no contribution to the nation’s wellbeing. Health Secretary Steve Barclay is right to crack down on the number of employees in NHS England. Use the money saved to train more nurses, more doctors, more paramedics.

4. Lift the absurd 7,500 annual cap on medical training places.  

5. Get rid of all diversity and inclusion officers. The NHS is already the most diverse organisation in the country.

6. Bring back tax breaks for private health insurance. People would love to have the option of going private if it was affordable. Plus it would relieve pressure on the NHS.

7. Issue a public apology to the 40,000-plus social care workers who quit their jobs when the Government made the Covid vaccination mandatory for them. Offer them their jobs back on increased pay as Italy’s prime minister Georgia Meloni has done. That should help unblock some of the 12,000 beds a day and ease hospital admissions.

8. Give two of the UK’s leading oncologists, Prof Pat Price and Prof Karol Sikora, a billion quid apiece to buy all the scanners and staff they need to set up catch-up cancer centres. Tens of thousands of lives will be saved and, unlike NHS managers, Price and Sikora will make sure the money gets to the frontline.    

10. A Trip Advisor with reviews for hospitals wouldn’t be a bad idea.    

Let me have your ideas for the Prime Minister in the comment section below. Eventually, the UK will have to shift to a state-private funding model utilised by all the countries with successful health services. In the meantime, let’s not criticise Rishi Sunak (or anyone else) for using a private GP. Given the alternative, who wouldn’t?