NHS

Wes Streeting Excerpts

Thursday 23rd May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

Let me start with a few points of genuine consensus. First, I associate myself and my party wholeheartedly with the right hon. Lady’s remarks about the hon. Member for South Thanet (Craig Mackinlay) and the extraordinary courage and strength he has shown. I greatly welcome her reassurance to victims of the contaminated blood scandal and the emphasis she placed on the cross-party commitment to continue at pace to deliver justice, whatever the outcome of the general election. I also welcome what she said about the justifiably cautious and responsible approach she is taking in relation to puberty blockers in the light of the Cass review.

That is the end of the consensus, however, because after 14 years of Conservative incompetence, neglect and vandalism, the national health service has never been in a worse state. The Government cut 2,000 GPs and now it is impossible to get an appointment. They wasted billions of pounds on top-down reorganisations, recruitment agencies and crony contracts for useless personal protective equipment instead of training the workforce the NHS needs. They forced nurses out on strike for the first time in history; and now the Prime Minister shamelessly tries to blame them for his own failures, sending the country into an election with strike action still looming. He promised to cut waiting lists; they are up to 7.5 million. Even their claim that waiting lists have fallen in the last six months has been achieved only by excluding the community figures—fiddling the figures. He promised to build 40 new hospitals and the Government have failed to build a single one. They hold people in this country in such contempt: the Conservatives think the public are so stupid that they will fall for the same recycled soggy promise all over again. Vast swathes of the country have been left without a single NHS dentist, forcing people in Britain, in 2024, to perform DIY dentistry on themselves.

After 14 years, the fundamental promise of the NHS has been broken: people can no longer be sure the NHS will be there for them when they need it. Listening to the Prime Minister’s interviews this morning, it is clear he has given up on the NHS. He has called this election with no plan to cut waiting lists, no plan to end the strikes, and no plan to reform the service. The Conservatives have taken the NHS to breaking point; if they are given five more years, they will finish the job.

This election is the country’s chance to turn the page on 14 years of failure, to end the chaos in the NHS and to rebuild our NHS. No part of our country is crying out louder for change than our health service—not just investment but reform, because if the NHS is to be there for us free at the point of use for the next 75 years, as it has been in the last, it must change. Only Labour can deliver that change.

Our damp squib of a Prime Minister is dripping into this election with a puddle not a plan. In contrast, Labour has a plan to get our NHS back on its feet and make it fit for the future. [Interruption.] Conservative Members ask what it is: give the people what they want—40,000 extra appointments a week at evenings and weekends to cut waiting lists; double the number of scanners, with AI-enabled scanners diagnosing patients faster; 700,000 emergency dental appointments and reform of the contract to rescue NHS dentistry; double medical school places and train thousands more nurses, GPs and midwives, delivering Labour’s workforce plan; bring back the family doctor so patients can see the same GP for each appointment; 8,500 mental health professionals to treat people on time, with mental health support in every school and hubs in every community, alongside landmark reform of the Mental Health Act 1983. That is Labour’s plan, and that is just the start. More than that, unlike the Conservatives, we have a record on the NHS to be proud of: a record of the shortest waiting lists and the highest patient satisfaction in history. We did it before, and we will do it again. That is why representatives of the nationalist parties in Wales and Scotland know, and even admit in private, that a Labour Government in Westminster will be a rising tide that lifts all ships across our United Kingdom.

I say to people that it is not enough to send MPs to Westminster to oppose the Conservatives; they need to send Labour MPs to replace the Conservatives. If they are given five more years, nothing will change. The chaos will continue, and the NHS crisis will get worse. As we approach this general election, be in no doubt: the only way to deliver the change our country needs is to vote Labour. I have every hope that our country will do just that.

[Victoria Atkins]

I know that the hon. Gentleman has spent a lot of time in recent days studying that infamous pledge card. It has obviously taken up a lot of space in his brain, because he seems not to have understood that not only did we settle months ago with the consultants, so they are not on strike, but we have arrived at a settlement with the specialty and specialist doctors, which is going out to ballot. He asked about junior doctors, and he has obviously missed the news that we have just entered mediation with them. We are bringing together, with the workforce plan, the progress we are making on working conditions. The Labour party does not like conversations about mediation—no, no, no —because we all know that Labour MPs are beholden to their trade union masters and have never condemned a single strike that has affected our constituents and their access to healthcare.

The hon. Gentleman asks about the new hospital programme, and I was wondering whether he would. It is, as some might say in politics, bold. I have taken the trouble—it was a lot of trouble—to read the Labour party’s health mission. One of its pledges is that one of the first steps of a Labour Government would be to pause all capital projects in the NHS. Our constituents should be clear: the Conservatives have a new hospital programme, which we are delivering; the Labour party has a no new hospital programme.

The hon. Gentleman also talked about the ideas for the NHS—ones he could not quite remember over the weekend—and the number of appointments that Labour would bring. I think it was appointments, because when he was asked to clarify whether he meant appointment or treatments, he could not define it. I hate to break it to him, but there is a difference between an appointment and, for example, a triple heart bypass. I would love to know whether he is talking about appointments or treatments. Just to help him understand the scale of NHS England’s activities on a weekly basis, it provides 575,000 out-patient appointments a week. His pledge sounds like a big number, but the truth is that it will not even touch the sides, even when Labour has worked out where the sides are.

The hon. Gentleman also bravely talks about the Cass review, and I genuinely welcome the fact that he has thrown away his long-held principles and relied on the evidence that Dr Cass provided, but I wonder whether he ought to have a conversation with his fellow shadow Cabinet members, because they announced a policy this week that is self-identification by the back door. They want to put the responsibility for self-identification and the gender recognition certificate process on the shoulders of our GPs, when we have been clear that we want our GPs focusing on the 60 million more appointments they are making in the past year. He does not understand—[Interruption.] Forgive me, he is chuntering at me, and he needs to go away and read the Gender Recognition Act 2004, because it is a panel that looks after that process, and Labour is seeking to change that to make it a single GP.

The hon. Gentleman talks about the record of the Conservative party, and we are proud of it. I am particularly proud of the fact that we have record funding under the Government for mental and physical health. I wonder whether he is quite so proud of the record in Wales. By the way, Labour runs the NHS in Wales; I wish I had responsibility for Wales, but I only have responsibility for England.

[Wes Streeting]

How is that going?

[Victoria Atkins]

It is going better than it is in Wales. Under the Labour-run NHS in Wales, a quarter of people are on a waiting list in that part of the NHS. The number of patients waiting two years is higher in Wales than it is in England. Patients are waiting on average six weeks longer in Labour-run Wales than in England. If that performance were replicated here in England, waiting lists could be as much as six million higher. The choice is clear: unfunded Labour failure or a clear plan for a more secure future with the Conservatives.