Our NHS could change for ever but the plans could be controversial

I’m convinced there is no in between, not after this past fortnight which has pitched banks into the limelight, sometimes for good reasons, but not always.

Frankly I’m not very efficient with money. If I wasn’t married to someone who more or less knows his way around banking and computers I’d be lost.

Thankfully our children took after him and I can see our grandson has a way with money which he didn’t inherit from me.

I like to read the financial pages in newspapers; some of it is at my level of understanding, though most of it is far over my head. Recently I felt the need to waken up and take more notice given that the price of everything appears to have risen to miraculous levels in no time at all. At least that’s what my bank statement was showing.

Shopping with a bank card is so easy. All those years of struggling to find the cheque book at the bottom of your handbag in a busy store is over and cash….well who carries cash these days? Hands up how many out there would hardly know what a 50p piece looked like now. But maybe modern banking has left us asleep at the wheel. A headline this week made me sit up and take notice.

It quoted the audit watchdog which keeps an eye on the country’s financial state that a jump in the Bank Rate has pushed up borrowing costs – potentially costing the Exchequer billions if it’s sustained. It’s not hard to guess that the Exchequer has been in a state of panic. Inflation has risen and that was just the start. Did any of us notice with our casual approach to banking?

The Government is tearing its hair out wondering how it will cope with all the wage demands from the workers, even those in the highest paid brackets such as doctors and dentists. The NHS is in crisis with waiting lists counted in years and not a few months as before and though nurses – the absolutely essential staff – are also returning to work, our NHS is still in a state of crisis. And then there are the Doctors who have shaken up the Government in a big way. We all need both of these essential workers at some time in our lives but then we also need teachers, train drivers, domestic workers… the list is endless.

All of this ultimately will have an affect on people’s working lives. The Government has a 15-year plan to `plug a deficit of up to 360,000 NHS staff by creating an army of junior and apprentice roles and speed up clinical training’. The plan appears to be that potential doctors and nurses will begin their careers in hospitals straight after A-levels. There will also be assistance roles.

So what does all this mean? As I see it in 15 years’ time our hospital wards will be staffed by teenage would-be professionals, wading through their longish apprenticeship to become nurses and doctors.

This scheme starts rolling out later this year. I don’t have a problem with the idea but firstly, perhaps, the Government should begin a programme of well-being, encouraging everyone to live more sensibly and cut out the rubbish which passes for food. Our lifestyles will have to change dramatically in fact.

Alongside and increasingly A1 and robotics in diagnostics and administration will fit into the changing system. An entirely new world of health care may emerge from it all starting as soon as 2031. Rishi Sunak said recently he believes this `most radical’ reform of the NHS will ultimately save the taxpayers £10billion.

Today most school leavers are 18 years old and they act like they could rule the world. So they should be given that chance.