Keir Starmer warned that the ‘broken’ NHS must ‘reform or die’ after a damning report found billions of pounds in extra investment has failed to boost performance.
The PM gave a sobering speech about the health service’s challenging future and emphasised the necessity of taking immediate action to reduce wait times and increase access.
He will stress, though, that adding more funds is not possible without first making root and branch adjustments.
Instead, he argued resources must be shifted from inefficient hospitals to community care, preventing illness from developing.
‘We have to fix the plumbing before turning on the taps. No more money without reform,’ Sir Keir said, suggesting the process would take a decade.
In a round of interviews ahead of Sir Keir’s keynote speech, Health Secretary Wes Streeting said the NHS ‘unquestionably’ wastes money and could go ‘bust’ without fundamental change.
He also criticised the British Medical Association, which doubles as a regulator and industry body, for ‘sabre-rattling’.
Professor Sir John Bell, who was a member of the Covid Vaccine Taskforce, echoed concerns about the BMA, saying it has been a ‘major drag’ on reform.
The radical approach is being unveiled after a damning new report by Lord Darzi, a pioneering surgeon and former Labour health minister, concluded the NHS is in a ‘critical condition’.
In just nine weeks, the quick evaluation was completed to support the government’s ten-year reform plan.
Tories have accused Mr Streeting of ‘trying to chase headlines while laying the groundwork for tax rises at the Budget’.
According to medical professionals, the government needs to immediately lay out a strategy outlining how it will react to the review.
Lord Darzi, who now sits as an independent peer, said he was ‘shocked’ by the scale of the failings he unearthed.
His 142-page report reveals that waits for routine care and A&E have gotten longer, people have gotten sicker, and progress in tackling some major conditions has stalled.
It continues, adding that the NHS has grown less effective with the funding it receives and is mired in red tape.
Responding to the report at the King’s Fund think tank in London, Sir Keir said, ‘What we need is the courage to deliver long-term reform—major surgery, not sticking plaster solutions.
‘The NHS is at a fork in the road, and we have a choice about how it should meet these rising demands.
‘Raise taxes on working people to meet the ever-higher costs of an ageing population—or reform to secure its future.
‘We know working people can’t afford to pay more, so it’s reform or die.’
The National Health Service (NHS) has significant challenges. Its head of management, which is growing at an exponential rate, is nearly as large as the frontline personnel who interact directly with patients. These managers earn high salaries and spend their days in meetings.
There are meetings about meetings. Hours of long meetings on every level, back and forth about topics that could have been effectively communicated with a short email.
Senior staff members are rarely present when patient-facing staff members are alone since they are always in meetings and are the only ones who can make important choices. The incredibly bureaucratic nature of the NHS is the other problem.
Front-line staff spend very little time on actual patient care. Still, they spend plenty of time documenting, reporting, uploading, and registering information on so many incompatible systems and databases, and staff members barely have any time to deal with patients.
“No more money without reform” means that Labour is going to finish what the Tories started and that’s the privatisation of the NHS.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 