Labour's progress with the NHS is under threat if Reform wins the local elections, writes Wes Streeting

And for the last 14 years, at almost every possible opportunity, the Conservatives took the wrong choices with our NHS.

Their choices broke the system, and when we took over just 20 months ago, the prognosis was not good.

You’ve just seen your local GP after feeling unwell.

They are confident they know the cause of your symptoms.

However, they must refer you to specialist clinicians for further checks, tests, or scans for a definitive diagnosis.

And when that diagnosis is for something serious, like suspected bowel, breast, or prostate cancer, you’d be right in thinking time is of the essence.

But the nearest hospital is miles away.

First available appointments aren’t for weeks, months, piling uncertainty and anxiety on top of physical stress.

Illness should never make us victims of geography and punishingly long waits.

The NHS should fit around people’s lives, not the other way around.

This Government agrees. That’s why this Government is making the right choices.

The choice to invest in the health service, finally, after 14 years of death by a thousand cuts.

We’re investing £237 million to end the postcode lottery of provision by expanding Community Diagnostic Centres (CDCs), starting with the communities that need them most.

There are currently 170 CDCs operating across England. Of these centres, 17 are set to expand their facilities, and 15 are being enhanced with new scanning equipment, outpatient clinic space and additional testing facilities.

Meanwhile, four new state-of-the-art centres in Gorton, Boston, Luton and Bideford will open, thanks to this major funding boost.

Whether new, established, or expanded, many will be in convenient locations like shopping centres and high streets in villages, towns, and cities across England.

That means more people will have easy access to tests, checks and scans when it works for them.

Over 3.5 million more key diagnostic tests were carried out across the NHS in England during the first 18 months of this Government’s first year and a half in power – up 9% on the previous 18 months.

Investment like this matters. And the benefits are being felt by patients like Beverley from Staffordshire:

Beverley spent a year being treated for lymphoma, which included regular blood tests at her local CDC.

Unlike the long journey to hospital, her CDC is just 12 minutes from home, she’s seen quickly by familiar and friendly staff, and she doesn’t have to worry about finding parking.

Best of all, Beverley says the ease of access and familiarity “lessens the fear [and] uncertainty of it all".

This latest expansion brings total government investment in CDCs, since July 2024, to £372.5 million. Making real progress for patients like Beverley, across the country.

But that progress is under threat. Not just the progress that we’ve made, but every step of progress made by my Labour predecessors since the NHS's founding in 1948.

In just a few weeks' time, millions of Britons will go to the polls to choose their local and national leaders.

If the polls are to be believed, it’s Nigel Farage’s Reform UK who are to come out on top.

But what exactly does the NHS look like under a Reform Government? They’ve been astonishingly vague – almost as if they’re hiding.

Hiding from the reality that Nigel Farage does not believe in our NHS. He never has.

It’s time for them to come clean about their healthcare plans.

Labour is investing an extra £26 billion in the NHS, funding that every other party, including Reform, voted against.

We are taking the NHS from its worst crisis in our history and putting it back on its feet.

Lots done, lots more to do.

It remains our mission to make sure 92% of patients are seen within 18 weeks from referral to treatment (RTT) by March 2029.

We haven’t seen service levels like that since 2015.

Ambitious? You bet. Achievable? With Labour, definitely.

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Wes Streeting is the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, and Labour MP for Ilford North.

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