Health Secretary Wes Streeting admits NHS reform will not begin right away
Health Secretary Wes Streeting has admitted NHS reform will not happen straight away.
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.
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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.
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.
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NHS reform: ‘Be careful what you wish for’
“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.”
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‘Difficult choices’ in Reeves’ budget
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.
Reform’s plan was meant to be detailed. Instead, there’s more confusion.
The party had grown weary of the longstanding criticism that their tough talk on immigration did not come with a full proposal for what they would do to tackle small boats if they came to power.
So, after six months of planning, yesterday they attempted to put flesh on to the bones of their flagship policy.
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At an expensive press conference in a vast airhanger in Oxford, the headline news was clear: Reform UK would deport anyone who comes here by small boat, arresting, detaining and then deporting up to 600,000 people in the first five years of governing.
They would leave international treaties and repeal the Human Rights Act to do it
But, one day later, that policy is clear as mud when it comes to who this would apply to.
Nigel Farage launched an airport-style departures board to illustrate how many illegal migrants have arrived in the UK. Pic: PA
I asked Farage at the time of the announcement whether this would apply to women and girls – an important question – as the basis for their extreme policy seemed to hinge on the safety of women and girls in the UK.
He was unequivocal: “Yes, women and children, everybody on arrival will be detained.
“And I’ve accepted already that how we deal with children is a much more complicated and difficult issue.”
But a day later, he appeared to row back on this stance at a press conference in Scotland, saying Reform is “not even discussing women and children at this stage”.
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He later clarified that if a single woman came by boat, then they could fall under the policy, but if “a woman comes with children, we will work out the best thing to do”.
A third clarification in the space of 24 hours on a flagship policy they worked on over six months seems like a pretty big gaffe, and it only feeds into the Labour criticism that these plans aren’t yet credible.
If they had hoped to pivot from rhetoric to rigour, this announcement showed serious pitfalls.
But party strategists probably will not be tearing out too much hair over this, with polling showing Reform UK still as the most trusted party on the issue of immigration overall.
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