The NHS cyberattack: the front pages, and the jewel in the crown
Hour three of the cyberattack coverage, live on Sky News: reading across the morning front pages up to the Sun's "National Hacked Service", why the attack should not be minimised because other companies were hit too, and a word on spending public money well.
On the day
By mid-morning the story was on every front page, and the third briefing was built around them. The Sun had gone with “NHS: National Hacked Service”, and the studio was showing a live map of attacks around the world. My worry, watching the coverage build, was that the scale of it, companies and countries everywhere, could end up minimising what it meant here. This had not been aimed at the NHS; the NHS had simply fallen foul of it. But when a hospital’s systems go down, it is not shareholders who pay, it is patients. I wanted to hold that line, and to say a plain thing about money: the answer is not just to spend more, it is to spend it well.
What I said
The presenter’s questions and the newspaper round-up are paraphrased. My answers are my own words from the recording, lightly edited for reading clarity. This is a draft: I have not yet listened back against the recording to confirm every turn.
Stephen Dixon paraphrased, from 0:19
The presenter turned to the morning papers, dominated by the hack. He read across the front pages, from the Times, the Mail, the Mirror, the Express and the Telegraph to the Guardian, up to the Sun’s headline, “NHS: National Hacked Service”, and showed a live map of attacks around the world. As a doctor who had been through the coverage, he asked what had grabbed me.
Dr Kishan Rees from the recording, 1:36
It’s scary. The idea of hackers holding the NHS to ransom: across the country you have the most caring, compassionate, hard-working people, doctors, nurses, healthcare professionals, putting their own lives on hold to help others, and this is just something that makes their job harder, and ultimately the patients are the ones who suffer.
Stephen Dixon paraphrased, from 1:57
The presenter put a slightly different perspective of his own: the attack had not been aimed at the NHS, which had simply fallen foul of it, and yet here was the jewel in the crown under attack.
Dr Kishan Rees from the recording, 2:11
I really hope that isn’t used as a distraction. Let’s not let the significance of this be minimised by the fact that other big companies were affected too. We should be proud of the NHS, we should be funding it properly, it is the jewel in the crown, as you said. Companies get hacked and shareholders lose money; here, ultimately, people might lose their lives.
Stephen Dixon paraphrased, from 2:44
On money, the presenter said he did not want to open the whole question of NHS funding, with an election campaign already under way to do that, but asked whether the large sums going into cyber security might be money the public would rather see spent on the front line.
Dr Kishan Rees from the recording, 3:15
I completely agree. New Labour put a lot of money into the NHS, and I benefited from that in becoming a medical student. But we have to have proper spending of public money; it can’t be thrown around willy-nilly. It is not a case of just chucking money at the problem, it is a case of whether it is being spent properly, whether we are getting value for money.
Broadcast by Sky News, 13 May 2017; clip from the WatMed Media archive, my own upload. Sky News retains the rights in the broadcast. This page carries my own contributions with the presenter’s questions paraphrased, credits the programme, and I will amend or remove on request.