Wes Streeting: I won’t pretend NHS is envy of world

Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting has said he would not “pretend the NHS is the envy of the world” as he promised reforms under a Labour government.

He gave a speech setting out Labour’s plan to fix the NHS in England, which he said was in “existential” crisis.

Labour would train more staff and use the private sector to bring down waiting lists, he said.

He branded left-wing critics of his proposals “the true Conservatives”.

Speaking at the right-leaning Policy Exchange think tank, Mr Streeting suggested the NHS was not “delivering a standard of care that patients should be satisfied with”.

Labour, he said, “will give the NHS the investment and staff it needs, but that has to result in better standards for patients”.

Mr Streeting’s reformist agenda has thrust him into the centre of a fractious debate about the future of the NHS at the time when nurses are locked in a dispute over pay with the government.

The shadow health secretary said Thursday’s unprecedented strike by nurses was the result of “12 years of failure to get our economy growing”, pay freezes and funding cuts.

But in wide-ranging speech lasting about 15 minutes, Mr Streeting said the NHS’s problems went beyond the strikes and laid out what a Labour government would do to address them.

In recent years, the NHS – which was founded under a Labour government in the 1940s – has faced significant financial and workforce challenges, made worse by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The care backlog is at a record high, with NHS England figures showing 7.2 million people were waiting to start routine treatment at the end of October.

Mr Streeting said it was clear NHS staff were “working as hard as they can”, but added: “We cannot continue pouring money into a 20th-century model of care that delivers late diagnosis and more expensive treatment”.

The shadow health secretary, who was last year treated successfully for cancer in an NHS hospital, said reform was the only option.

He said he endorsed a report by Policy Exchange, which lays out a roadmap for how Labour could achieve its target of training 15,000 medical students a year, if it wins the next general election.

On top of this, Mr Streeting said Labour’s plan would involve:

Attempts to reform the NHS have proved politically contentious, especially for Labour, some of whose MPs are ideologically opposed to private-sector involvement in the health service.

But Mr Streeting said Labour would not shy away from reform under the leadership of Sir Keir Starmer, who had planted the party “firmly in the centre-ground”.

“It is plain to see for anyone who uses the NHS that it is failing patients on a daily basis,” Mr Streeting said. “So yes, we are going to reform it and make the NHS fit for the future.”

“Ironically, it is those voices from the left who oppose reform, who prove themselves to be the true conservatives.”

In a recent interview with the Sunday Telegraph, Mr Streeting was quoted as saying the NHS must “reform or die”.

Mr Streeting said some “online bad-faith actors” had suggested he was “ambivalent about which my preferred option would be”.

“I do believe the crisis is existential for the NHS,” he said.

“And it is in defence of the NHS’s founding principles, funded through progressive taxation, free at the point of use, that I make the reform argument.”

The shadow health secretary was keen to distance himself not only from the current government, but also from Labour’s recent past.

He denounced opponents of reform as “Conservatives” – including Momentum, the left-wing group set up to support Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.

The line echoed Tony Blair’s conference speech more than two decades ago, when he described New Labour as “progressive politics distinguishing itself from the conservatism of left or right”.

Indeed, if Momentum respond to their tail being tweaked this would further illustrate the growing gulf between the current leadership and the previous one.

Usually, even the most moderate of Labour politicians won’t say a word against the NHS and those who work in it.

But Mr Streeting felt comfortable telling what he would see as home truths about Labour’s relationship with the NHS.

His political positioning was not exactly subtle, speaking to a centre-right think tank and describing the NHS not just as his party’s finest achievement, but Britain’s.

All this was designed to make people who don’t usually vote Labour sit up and listen. But there is little doubt that some who usually back his party won’t entirely like what they are hearing.