The discovery that people were being made to wait for many hours before receiving emergency treatment prompted the NHS to set targets. No patient brought into accident or emergency is supposed to wait more than four hours before receiving some attention.

Now the Association of Ambulance Professional Personnel has revealed that hospital chiefs are forcing ambulances to wait with the patients in hospital car parks until casualty staff are prepared to accept them. Sometimes the wait is an hour and a half before the patient is officially handed over and the clock starts running. The ambulance crews point out that this is not only bad for patients, it also ties up paramedics who could be going to assist others.

It calls to mind the production quotas and targets of the old five year plans of the Socialist economies, together with the almost universal cheating which accompanied them. This resemblance is hardly surprising, since the NHS itself is a throwback to the economic system which characterised them.