Hospital food: will Prue Leith succeed where others have failed?

The Great British Bake Off judge, Prue Leith, will lead the Government’s “root and branch” review of hospital food. This follows a rain-grey queue of scandals involving deadly sandwiches, year-old ready meals, and a sub-prison budget that, this tired writer must concede, surprised no one who has read a newspaper in the last decade.

The NHS is broke, and having no money doesn’t lend itself to rich nutritional experiences. If you don’t think so, I invite readers to look at the alleged journalism that several national publications over the past week copy and pasted from Instagram.

Prue Leith suits the job at first look. A catering lecturer and novelist, she has written on the stuff for years. The Guardian. Her own blog. Speeches all over. The Internet is full of Leith’s refreshing prose on the subject.

You hope this verbal skill and thorough research might push her message further than that of past food tsars. Lloyd Grossman, Heston Blumenthal, and James Martin have all led failed attempts to revamp NHScuisine. Why should Leith get any further?

To restate, Leith can write. She has more than once called the ready meal racket we see in hospitals “iniquitous PFIs”. That’s a nice phrase that packs thick wryness into a single blow. “Iniquitous”: a voluptuous Latinate word some elderly judge might throw out while necking his midday absinthe. “PFI”: a slovenly postmodernism that evokes nonsense like “synergy” and “human resources”. One committee to wipe and another to shake. That sort of thing.

After hearing tone-deaf illiteracy like “no-deal is better than a bad deal” for so long, I’m ready to listen to any government entity, adviser or otherwise, who can make their eyebrow so arch in seven syllables.

It also helps that her son is Boris Johnson’s political secretary.

When it comes to government reviews, there is a strong whiff of jostling. They tend to be an excuse to set up a carrot-shaped quango that ambitious junior ministers can dangle in front of the electorate, gain column inches, and perhaps be mentioned at the big table. You can tell this breed of bureaucracy by its clear lack of link to the top office.

Anyone remember the Wessely Review? Published just last year, it may just be the most important document on UK social care policy, with far reaching implications for human rights, terrorism, and public health. Yet there’s been nary a Whitehall peep since the meagre press attention died down.

Having a direct line to the centres of power, whether you like or despair of it, gets things done. This time, Danny Kruger is that line.

Yes. That Danny Kruger. The Tory speechwriter who, in a split-second of honesty in 2005, let slip that he and his neoliberal colleagues planned to “introduce a period of creative destruction in the public services”. Michael Howard, then shadow Conservative leader, had Kruger step down as the Tory candidate for Sedgefield (then the Prime Minister Tony Blair’s seat) shortly after. Since then, the devout Christian has mostly worked in think tanks, charities and religious education. During a spell as David Cameron’s speechwriter, he urged us all to “hug a hoodie”.

There is a cynical hope to be held onto here, one I will keep in spite of all reason and evidence. Kruger’s link to his mother is now public knowledge. The powers for which he operates have a political stake. Johnson’s government is attached by name to the future of hospital food. It would look bad if Prue’s review goes the way of Wessely.

Optics, for once, might make this government a little less short-sighted. It’s better than that though. Johnson, in spite of the anti-intellectualism that put him in Number 10, might have to hear out an expert, after all.