THE NHS is approaching the winter in “bad shape”, according to analysts at the King’s Fund, and that is a better way of describing its condition than “broken”, as Labour’s new Health Secretary Wes Streeting is prone to say.

It most be so demoralising for NHS workers, who pour their heart and soul into their jobs and their patients, to be told their system is “broken” when there are so many praise-worthy outcomes on a daily basis for so many people.

But Mr Streeting is right not to look at the NHS with rose-tinted spectacles. It is in a very bad way, as anyone who has sat overnight in A&E or waited for an ambulance or tried to get an appointment with a GP will testify.

And the worry is that there are no signs that, even with most of the strikes settled, the waits are coming down or demands on the service are easing – waits were up slightly in August, to a shocking 7.62m treatments, while more people attended A&E in September, 2.2m, than ever before in that particular month.

So it is not going to get better of its own accord.

The Budget at the end of this month is going to be crucial, although more money alone is not going to solve the NHS’s problems. Mr Streeting needs a plan for reform and he has only five years – well, four-and-a-half now because time is ticking – to make an appreciable improvement to the statistics that show what a bad shape the NHS is in.