Ideas@TheCentre
British bureaucracy and the baby
Meegan Cornforth |
29 January 2010
Braving the snow and icy conditions one recent afternoon on Christmas holidays in London, I visited a doctor’s surgery near my sister’s home to make an appointment for her newborn baby. Rather than being a simple endeavour of securing the next available timeslot, it was an annoyingly bureaucratic experience.
It began with a stern lecture from the receptionist for not following the rules. The NHS requires patients to be formally registered with the practice before the doctor sees them. Appointments must be made in the morning for the same day only. In addition, you cannot make phone appointments but must visit the surgery in person. This particular rule appears to have been established by the practice itself to sidestep confusion with the Appointments Line – an NHS telephone booking system so complicated that it requires an 18-page user guide!
The complexity of NHS regulations means that everyone is confused about procedure – patients and practices alike. And although many British surgeries are over-burdened, the NHS prevents patients from visiting GPs outside their designated catchment zone. In effect, the NHS would rather keep you in a crowded waiting room than let you see an available doctor.
In the world of the NHS, the patient is treated like an errant child whose punishment is to wade through a quagmire of bureaucracy to receive treatment. Fortunately in my case, the receptionist decided that given my colonial ignorance and argumentativeness, it was easier for her to break the rules ‘just this once, mind’ and give my little niece an appointment that very evening. A cherished victory of common sense over bureaucracy.
In an increasingly authoritarian Britain, the ill-functioning NHS is just one example of the difficulties imposed on the lives of citizens by too much regulation and government involvement.
At the forthcoming UK elections, Conservative Party leader David Cameron looks set to oust embattled Prime Minister Gordon Brown from 10 Downing Street. But don’t hold your breath for a Conservative victory to loosen the state’s bureaucratic grip over the country.
Although Cameron has occasionally mused on leading Britain into a new ‘post-bureaucratic age,’ this supposed big government sceptic has just plastered Britain with campaign posters promising: ‘I’ll cut the deficit, not the NHS.’
Any British child could tell him that there is plenty of NHS red tape waiting to be cut. Meegan Cornforth is Events Manager at the Centre for Independent Studies.
