Well, yes, this is going to be a fairly obvious point from someone at the ASI. Competition improves production.

As and when there are a number of competing producers of something then they will be competing to produce something better, or lower priced, or faster, or whatever is is that the buyer desires. Pretty simple stuff, but the great failure of British politics is that there are those whio insist that this isn't true of vast areas of the British economy.

You know, that thing where having large numbers of private sector landlords is bad, while having the State, and the State alone, as the provider of housing for the working classes will drive standards up. Where State schooling would get better if only there wern't private schools to show them up? Quite, where the near ludicrous idea that a zero competition monopoly will have better standards, better service, than someone or something that has to compete for customers?

Aye, the argument that the State provision of non-competetive, of non-competing, health services is wondrous, the very envy of the world:

We find strong evidence that hospitals that perceive to be facing more rivals are much better managed than those that consider fewer potential alternatives for patients to choose...

That the Government runs an insurance scheme, tax paid, that scrapes me up off the road when I'm hit by a car, I'm happy enough about. Delighted in fact.

But I do want it to be the best system possible, which means competition among hospitals, a market, in essence, the end of the NHS as currently organised.

We don't want competition in the NHS to make profits for companies, we want it so as to make the NHS better.