Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said he would ramp up weekend appointments to tackle NHS backlogs, while the shadow health secretary said investment in the national health service must be linked with reform.
NHS England data published last week showed a slight drop in the overall NHS waiting list for treatment, to 7.71 million treatments waiting to be carried out at the end of October, relating to 6.44 million patients.
This is down from the record 7.77 million treatments and 6.50 million patients at the end of September.
Sir Keir has called on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to fund more overtime for doctors and nurses, offering the party’s promise to end the non-dom tax status as a way to fund it.
“Labour has a fully-funded, NHS-backed plan to ramp up weekend appointments, clear the backlog, and help give people their lives back. There is one reason it’s not happening, and that’s a political choice by the Prime Minister to keep a tax loophole for the wealthiest,” he said. “Patients will rightfully be wondering why.”
Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting will join his party leader in a visit to a hospital trust in Yorkshire on Monday, where weekend clinics have been introduced.
Meanwhile, Mr. Streeting has said a Labour government can’t just “turn the tap on” to give the NHS more funding.
The comments came after he previously told The Sunday Times the NHS “uses every winter crisis and every challenge it faces as an excuse to ask for more money.”
Speaking on Sky News’ “Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips” programme, Mr. Streeting said there “will be investment with Labour, but it’s got to be linked to reform.”
The shadow minister said he’s “worried about the complacency that against the backdrop of appalling public finances, people assume that an incoming Labour government will just be able to turn the taps on.
“Even if [shadow chancellor] Rachel Reeves had a complete personality transplant and became a big spending chancellor, she might turn the tap on, but there’ll be nothing in the tank,” he said.
“So, we’ve got to be honest about the fact the public finances are in a mess. We’ve got to get a grip on that. That’s why Labour’s priority is going for growth.
He said the answer to the NHS “isn’t just more money, it’s investment and reform that delivers results.”
The Labour frontbencher warned that the NHS faces “the triple whammy of a growing ageing society, rising chronic disease, and rising cost pressures.”
“Unless we keep a focus, a sharp focus on all three, we threaten to not just overwhelm the NHS in terms of demand, but bankrupt the NHS financially,“ he said, adding that it is ”wasteful in every sense“ to pour ”ever-increasing amounts of taxpayers’ money into a broken system.”
“It’s a waste of money we don’t have, it’s a waste of time that isn’t on the NHS’s side, and it’s a waste of potential because I believe from the bottom of my heart that the NHS as a public service free at the point of use can exist for the next 75 years, but we’ve got to modernise and change in order for it to be sustainable in the longer term,” he said.
Mr. Streeting criticised the government for its handling of the NHS over the last 13 years, saying: “There isn’t a great deal of money to go around, and we can’t be complacent about that. I think there is a complacency that assumes that we can just turn the taps on.”
Pressed on who he believes is complacent, Mr. Streeting said: “Well, I think it’s a general complacency. I think it’s a general complacency about the NHS, it’s sustainability in its future.”
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has proposed that artificial intelligence can help free up doctors, teachers, police officers, and other civil servants from administrative tasks and help them with productivity, thereby breaking the “vicious circle of ever-rising taxes.”
