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Health Secretary Wes Streeting has pledged to cut “millions” of people on NHS waiting lists over the next five years and vowed to do all he can to reform England’s health service after an official review found it was in a “crisis”.
A government-commissioned report by Sir Ala Darji, published on Thursday, blames the dire state of the health system mainly on austerity measures in the 2010s that cut public spending to reduce the budget deficit, as well as the pandemic and the poor health of the population.
Chancellor Sir Keir Starmer will speak about the findings in a speech on Thursday morning, vowing to deliver “the biggest reforms to the NHS since it was founded”. “I know working people can’t afford to pay any more, so it’s reform or death,” he said.
Starmer has set out three key reform priorities for his government, vowing to move the NHS from “analogue to digital” services, move more care from hospitals to the community and “make a bold shift from disease to prevention”.
Streeting said: BBC Breakfast He said on Thursday morning: “I will do everything in my power to restore the NHS to what we call constitutional standards – the targets that it has set for itself – so that over the five years that we have committed to, and by the end of this Parliament, waiting lists will be millions less than they are now.”
Streeting added that he remains committed to implementing all of the plans that made up the previous administration’s new hospital plan.
But the plan “could potentially be carried out over a longer period of time because we have to ensure, number one, that we have the funding, number two, that the timeline is realistic, that we have the supply chain, the workforce, the resources that we need, and number three, we have to balance the need for new buildings with the need for new technology,” he added.
The previous Conservative government had pledged to build 40 new hospitals under the plan by 2030, but construction timelines for some projects were widely believed to be falling behind.
Mr Streeting also on Thursday called on doctors’ union, the British Medical Association (BMA), to stop “intimidation behaviour” in the row over Government funding for general practice.
Several GP practices across England are limiting the number of patients they can see each day after GP strikes.
“I’m not seeing any resistance in the NHS, people want change and we’re having good discussions with the BMA about reform,” Mr Streeting said in an interview with BBC Radio 4. today Thursday’s program.
“I think GPs want to work with this government,” he added. “They understand the seriousness of our intentions, and GPs really care about their patients. Like us, they want to re-establish the relationship between GPs and doctors.”
