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Health secretary Wes Streeting has promised to reduce NHS waiting lists by “millions” over the coming five years, as he pledged to go “hell for leather” to reform England’s health service after an official review found it is in “critical condition”.
Lord Ara Darzi’s government-commissioned report, published on Thursday, attributed the dire state of the health system in large part to the austerity policies of the 2010s, which slashed public spending in a bid to cut the budget deficit, as well as the pandemic and declining health of the nation.
In a speech on Thursday morning addressing the findings, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer will pledge to carry out the “biggest reimagining of our NHS since its birth”. He will say: “We know working people can’t afford to pay more, so it’s reform or die.”
Setting out the government’s top three priorities for reform, Starmer will vow to move the NHS away “from an analogue to a digital” service, shift more care from hospitals to communities and “be much bolder in moving from sickness to prevention”.
Streeting told BBC Breakfast on Thursday morning: “I’m going hell for leather to get the NHS back to what’s known as the constitutional standards, the targets it sets for itself, over the five-year period that we committed to, and to make sure that by the end of this parliament we see waiting lists millions lower than they are today.”
Streeting added that he was committed to delivering all of the schemes that comprise the former government’s new hospitals programme.
But the scheme may run “over a longer period of time, because I’ve got to make sure, firstly, the money is there, secondly that the timetables are realistic and we’ve got the supply chain, the labour and the resources that we will need, and thirdly, I’ve got to balance the need for new bricks and mortar alongside the need for new technology”, he added.
The former Tory government vowed to build 40 new hospitals by 2030 under the programme, although the timeframe for the construction of several of the projects was widely believed to have slipped.
Streeting also called on Thursday for the British Medical Association (BMA), the doctors’ union, to stop “sabre-rattling” over a dispute over government funding for general practice.
Some GP surgeries across England are capping the number of patients they see each day, as family doctors stage industrial action.
“I do not find resistance in the NHS, people are crying out for change, and I have some good conversations with the BMA, actually, on reform,” Streeting told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Thursday.
“I think GPs want to work with this government,” he added. “They can see the seriousness of our intent, and GPs really care about their patients. They want, as we do, to rebuild the family-doctor relationship.”
