Health Secretary Wes Streeting admits NHS reform will not begin until April

Published

2 months ago

October 21, 2024

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Health Secretary Wes Streeting has admitted NHS reform will not happen straight away and patients will have to wait until next April to see any changes.

The government launched a public consultation on Monday, asking members of the public, NHS staff, and experts to share their experiences and ideas to “help fix our NHS”.

But Mr Streeting admitted that reforms will not take place until that process has been completed – 10 months on from Labour’s election win in June.

He also said NHS funding agreed with Chancellor Rachel Reeves – to be announced in the upcoming budget – would not be available until next April.

Politics latest: No 10 rejects calls for reparations ahead of Commonwealth summit

Mr Streeting told Sky News: “Investment in the budget, that comes in the new fiscal year in April, so that’s spring.”

Labour’s election manifesto promised the party would “transform the NHS”, starting with cutting waiting times by adding 40,000 more appointments every week.

Labour politicians said reforms it wanted to make were fully costed, giving voters the impression they could make changes straight away.

Mr Streeting said the improvements they want to make in the NHS, such as cutting waiting times, are “big changes” so will take time.

Locals share their view on how to improve the NHS

In Wolverhampton city centre Michael Ryan, 66, is waiting to see his GP to get a wound re-dressed.

“I just had a hernia operation,” he says, before revealing he had to wait eight years for the surgery to go ahead.

“Fair enough, two of those were during Covid,” he says. But his experience has left him certain the NHS needs “more money invested in it”.

This is a city where almost a third of working age people don’t work. Many, like Robert Griffiths, are signed off sick. The 36-year-old has epilepsy and it’s affecting his mental health.

“It’s very frustrating but you can understand why it’s frustrating because they don’t have the staff,” he says.

He thinks the government needs to pay NHS workers more and reintroduce bursaries to encourage more people to train up.

But Sylvia Crutchley, 78, believes it needs to do more than that.

“I think the system needs a complete overhaul,” she says.

She points to a wound on her leg from a fall she had last week. She had to wait nine hours in A&E before being seen.

In a pharmacy we found people queuing for COVID jabs. The trainee pharmacist administering them told us the number of people coming in complaining they couldn’t get an appointment with their GP is “just ridiculous”.

And there was no shortage of views from people collecting prescriptions on what the NHS needs to improve.

Roger Flavell, 77, believes “‘more staff and more money” are essential.

But he thinks there will eventually be a “two tier system where people who can pay will pay”.

“I think it would make the NHS better,” he said.

He said they will have a “reform mindset that says we’re not just going to throw money at the problem, we’re going to reform ways of working”.

“I suppose you could say, well, you should just come in and impose your view of change,” the health secretary said.

“I’d just say to people, be careful what you wish for.

“The last time a new health secretary came in after a general election where their party won power, that was Andrew Lansley.

“The Conservatives after 2010, who came down with a massive top-down reorganisation that nobody voted for, nobody wanted, cost billions and set the NHS up to fail.”

Mr Streeting added he did not want to just pour money “into a black hole”.

He said: “It’s up to us to restore financial discipline in the NHS, better quality of care in the NHS, and to make sure that not just the extra money that’s going in is well spent, but to make sure that the money that’s already going in is being put in the right place at the right time to deliver the right care for the patient at the right time.”

The health secretary confirmed to Sky News on Sunday that his department had agreed to its funding with the chancellor ahead of the 30 October budget.

The Department for Health and Social Care has one of the biggest departmental budgets alongside the Department for Work and Pensions

In 2022, the UK spent 11.3% of GDP on health – £182bn – just above the average for comparable countries. The figure rises each year, with 2024/25 expected to see £192bn spent on the NHS, according to the King’s Fund.

Other ministers had been locked in negotiations with the chancellor over cuts she wants to make to their departments as she seeks £40bn of tax rises and spending cuts.

Several ministers had written letters to Sir Keir Starmer to express concern over the scale of cuts being demanded.

Politics

Reform UK overtakes Conservative membership – Nigel Farage calls it ‘historic’, Kemi Badenoch says numbers are ‘fake’

Published

40 mins ago

December 26, 2024

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Reform UK overtakes Conservative membership - Nigel Farage calls it 'historic', Kemi Badenoch says numbers are 'fake'

Reform UK now has more members than the Conservative Party and is “the real opposition” according to Nigel Farage, while Kemi Badenoch has called his numbers “fake”.

According to a digital counter on the party’s website, Reform UK had gone past 131,690 members – the amount the Conservative Party declared before its leadership election in the autumn – just before midday on Boxing Day.

Mr Farage, party leader and MP for Clacton-on-Sea, hailed the “historic moment” and said on X: “The youngest political party in British politics has just overtaken the oldest political party in the world. Reform UK are now the real opposition.”

But Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch accused the party of issuing misleading figures: “Manipulating your own supporters at Xmas eh, Nigel?. It’s not real. It’s a fake… [the website has been] coded to tick up automatically.”

Posting on X, she added that the Tories had “gained thousands of new members since the leadership election”.

Reform UK also shared a video of the membership tracker being projected on to the Conservative Party headquarters in London overnight.

Zia Yusuf, party chairman, also said “history has been made today” and that the Tories’ “centuries-long stranglehold on the centre-right of British politics” has “finally been broken”.

Mr Farage hit back at Ms Badenoch, who strongly contested Reform UK’s figures. He claimed to have proof and posted a screenshot of an online register reportedly showing ‘active memberships’.

“We understand you are bitter, upset and angry that we are now the second biggest party in British politics, and that the Conservative brand is dying under your leadership. However, this not an excuse to accuse us of committing fraud,” he wrote on X.

Mr Yusuf added to the debate by appearing to goad Ms Badenoch about an audit: “We will gladly invite a Big 4 audit firm to verify our membership numbers on the basis that you do the same.”

The Conservative party membership figure – shared after Kemi Badenoch was announced as the new leader on 2 November – was the lowest on record and a drop from the 2022 leadership contest, when there were around 172,000 members.

In response, a Conservative Party spokesman said: “Reform has delivered a Labour Government that has cruelly cut winter fuel payments for 10 million pensioners, put the future of family farming and food security at risk, and launched a devastating raid on jobs which will leave working people paying the price.

“A vote for Reform this coming May is a vote for a Labour council – only the Conservatives can stop this.”

According to research from the House of Commons Library, there is no uniformly recognised definition of party membership and no established method or body to monitor the number of members each political group has.

Reform UK was also originally set up as a limited company, but Mr Farage said he would change the party’s structure to be member-owned in September.

It comes after Mr Farage offered to help Lord Mandelson, the new ambassador to the US, negotiate with president-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration.

A long-time associate of Mr Trump, he has been seen at several Republican events during and after the presidential election.