Editor’s blog Thursday 10 June 2010: Lansleyism defined: abolishing targets to bring them back

You probably could make this up, but you'd need a scriptwriter who'd taken some pretty hefty narcotics.

In the new interview podcast for Doctors Net UK, Health Secretary Andrew Lansley CBE MP makes one of the most unintentionally hilarious promises imaginable.

There has been much question over whether and how  Lansleyism would keep its pre-electoral promises that, in David Cameron's phrase "those targets you hate, they're gone".

In this interview, Lansley reveals that the process, waiting time measures will become secret targets, hiding in the cupboard and waiting for the NHS to be naughty: "“If I get rid of the 18 week target, for example, what happens as a consequence? Do people in the NHS go, ‘Oh right, so it doesn’t matter how long people wait’? [If so] then it is hopeless and you will end up with all the impositions coming back".

So there you have it: nice and clear.

Process waiting time targets are being abolished.

Unless of course, people start to breach these abolished targets.

Then they'll be back.