Who would be Neil Gray? Eight short days ago, Mr Gray was the Scottish Government’s Economy Secretary. Scotland’s economy is not in good shape, but Mr Gray was doing a near-universally acknowledged good job in reassuring the business community that he "got it".  He did ‘get it’. He spoke the language of those who create wealth and jobs, and who build the economy that we need in order to pay for the public services that we want.

Indeed, as someone who put Mr Gray into those conversations as part of my job as a lobbyist, I can tell you, reader, that he was well-liked and well-regarded by that business community. They were content with him in that job.

But he is no longer. Michael Matheson’s resignation created a gap and, as the Cabinet’s designated safe-pair-of-hands, Mr Gray was destined to fill it. He is now the Health Secretary. Scottish politics’ worst job.

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The NHS is a curious beast in that it has long amalgamated two seemingly juxtaposed positions amongst the people. We complain about it all the time, usually because we cannot get a GP appointment, or because we wait for most of the day at the Emergency Department, or because we wait years degenerating in extreme pain for a routine joint replacement. And yet we express love for it, almost in the way that a follower might express love for a cult leader, and just in case any amongst us are thinking about leaving the commune we remind ourselves of its irreplaceability by painting our postboxes blue and daubing "Thank You NHS" on them.

Part of this is the mythology around the word "free’" Brits have been told, by politicians of all stripes, that the NHS doesn’t cost them anything. This is, of course, gobbledygook. An average earner on, say, £30,000 a year will pay over £5,000 in income tax and National Insurance. The Scottish Government spends nearly 40 per cent of its budget on the NHS. You do the maths.

That should, and little by little, is, provoking more awkward questions. Why am I in a queue outside the GP surgery? Why am I waiting in that Emergency Department? Why am I waiting for that hip replacement?

The answer is not "because the NHS is underfunded". The OECD - the best, most independent data analyst on such matters - tells us that the NHS is funded to the tune of around 10 per cent of GDP, just over the average of around nine per cent. We may wish to feed it more money, but it does not actually need it.

The real answer is both simple and devilishly complicated. The NHS’s problem can be summarised simply, in a single word: capacity.

According to the OECD (and corroborated last year by the King’s Fund), we have significantly fewer doctors and nurses per head than our European neighbours. To make matters worse, we are doubling down on that deficit by training fewer still. Ireland, for instance, trains twice the number of doctors per head of population than us.

Those doctors and nurses have less kit to use. We have a horrifyingly small number of CT and MRI scanners compared to other rich countries; half the number per head than the French, one-third of the Finns, a quarter of the Italians, and astonishingly only one-tenth of the number of the Japanese, according to the King’s Fund. And with only around 2.5 hospital beds for every 1,000 people, we have half the number of the OECD average.

The Herald: Staff shortages are a major problem for the NHSStaff shortages are a major problem for the NHS (Image: PA)

It is hardly surprising, given that and our general ill-health as a nation (also partly caused by the "no personal responsibility" attitude the NHS encourages, that a far higher proportion of our people die from heart attacks, strokes and major cancers than in comparable countries.

Capacity. Simple. But solving the capacity problem is devilishly complicated and politically challenging.

Einstein’s quote is always at the front of my mind when thinking about the NHS: “We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.” Mr Gray should print it out and put it on the wall of his office, for without its inspiration he cannot succeed.

There are some relatively short-term fixes. The private sector should be encouraged, and if necessary incentivised, to expand in order to alleviate the substantial backlogs for routine but vital surgery. Private healthcare, either through occupational benefits or individual funding, is expanding, and we should embrace its dual benefits of reducing waiting lists and retaining money in the NHS. The doctor and nurse capacity issues (the same people generally work in the NHS and the private sector) would place a limit on the effectiveness of private sector expansion, but nonetheless it would help.

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Using technology to increase productivity gets harder with every year it remains in the "too difficult" box, but there are pockets of quick fixes everywhere, where the use of technology instead of people would save money, make the service more rapid and provide a better outcome for the patient.

Prioritising the physical and mental health of the paediatric population is both a short- and long-term fix. Both represent, in effect, an epidemic, and investing sensibly in their treatment and, more importantly, in their prevention would represent better expenditure than many of the black holes into which money is currently poured.

And, of course, pay. Many people will have had their fill of public sector pay demands, but in the case of doctors in particular, we are asking for trouble. The starting salary for a doctor, despite the years of academic and extra-curricular excellence, dedication and focus, relentless examination and long and unsociable hours, is just over £30,000. A train driver starts on around £50,000.

It is hardly surprising that so many doctors look at the salary, combined with the NHS being a notoriously dismal employer, plough their furrow elsewhere, exacerbating our capacity problem.

Increasingly, the people are able to display more nuance than the politicians when it comes to the future of the NHS. Regular polling by The Health Foundation shows that Brits combine pride in the NHS, and a desire to retain it (72 per cent) with an acknowledgement (77 per cent) that the Service is unprepared to meet the demands of an ageing population.

The people can cope with an honest conversation. But someone needs to lead it. Step in, Mr Gray.