Joking reform ideas removed from the NHS consultation website

Writing on X, he joked, external that a recommendation for a Wetherspoons in every hospital was “unfortunately vetoed by the Chancellor”.

He also turned down a call to have him shot from a cannon in an effort to raise money for the service.

The Department of Health has promised that the listening exercise will “help shape” its new NHS strategy, which will be published next spring.

But some suggestions are less likely to be taken seriously than others.

Ideas that seem to have disappeared from the consultation website, external including offering lager Madrí in all hospitals to “help patient morale”, and replacing Streeting as health secretary with a dog.

However, suggestions to replace ambulance sirens with healthy eating advice and to install Thunderbird 2-style removable patient compartments in ambulances appear to still be online.

By late afternoon, the suggestions most popular among users on the site included restrictions on sending paper letters and making it easier for GP practices to access hospital digital records.

Other highly regarded ideas include making it easier for non-British nationals to pay for treatments, and fines for missed appointments, an idea proposed and then dropped by former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

The health department has not confirmed which posts it removes, but a spokesperson said “clearly inappropriate or irrelevant” material was removed or hidden by the moderation team.

Ideas put forward by ministers at the launch of the consultation include making full medical records, test results and letters from doctors available on the NHS app.

Currently the NHS app is limited because patient records are kept locally by a patient’s GP and the hospitals they visit – and not all parts of the healthcare system interact with the app.