> The background is the > decade of underfunding of public services.

I would disagree. Similar countries with similar spending on health in terms of proportion of GDP or PPP spend per capita seem to have much better health systems. The UK has a fairly typical spend compared to France, Germany, the Scandinavian countries and so on on both measures - on each measure it spends less than some and more than others: httpshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea...

It spends a lot less than the US which is the one developed country I know of with a clearly worse service.

> Neither of these cases inspire confidence in the General Medical Council or the Crown Prosecution Service.

I do not have a great deal of confidence in either of those in any case. The CPS has did prosecute some of the Post Office Scandal cases (even though most were private prosecutions), it failed to prosecute Mohammed Al-Fayed and many others, it has a very poor record on domestic abuse (failing to prosecute emotional abuse after it became a crime, or where victims were male).

Spending is one thing, but the UK just trains too few doctors [1], a consequence of Conservative policies and mismanagement. The Conservative efforts to centralize the NHS in London has also resulted in a system that doesn't scale and doesn't distribute resources efficiently.

[1] https://www.bma.org.uk/advice-and-support/nhs-delivery-and-w...

I agree about both those, but its a bit odd to blame the Conservatives for something that labour did too: its pretty much consensus policy.

Labour (Blair and Brown) also weakened the NHS financially by running off-balance sheet debt.