Listening to the debate on Prime Minister’s Questions about the National Health Service made me cross. I suspect I am not alone.

Successive administrations have failed to grasp the nettle necessary if the situation has any chance of being restored to the halcyon days that we baby boomers claim to remember. Whether those memories are accurate or not is another matter. The Prime Minister answers the criticism by saying that there are x more doctors, nurses and ancillary staff etc. under her government, as if that alone could put things right.

The opposition leader would spend more, he claims, but we know it would be borrowed money and our economic position would suffer. But there is a third way.

There are so many documentaries showing the parlous state of the health provision in this country that it is incontrovertible that something must be done soon if hundreds of lives are not to be put at risk.

It is a fact that hospitals now have corridor nurses whose job is to ensure that those lying on trolleys for hours and even days on end do not suffer more than is necessary as a result of the lack of appropriate beds to move them to.

It is a fact that not just non-urgent surgery is repeatedly postponed at the very last minute but more urgent surgery too, when an overstretched hospital cannot provide post-operative beds.

It is not long since the medical provision in war zones was far removed from our own and attracted fund raising initiatives because we saw it to be inhumane and appalling that people should have to be treated in such desperate conditions. Are we turning into a third world country?

Yes, we have an exponentially increasing elderly population and yes, what medicine can do for us now can be and often is very expensive partly because of pharmaceutical companies demanding huge profits.

But we have known that this would be the case for decades and consistently failed to do the one single thing that would help. Add one or two pence in the pound to income tax, ring fenced for the NHS.

Two pence would raise around £10 billion. If the party leaders could put aside the ritual posturing for long enough to agree that, then the one impediment – the fear of losing the next election - could be removed in the national interest.

A united approach for the benefit of all.