Wes Streeting vows to create 2 million more NHS appointments in first year of Labour government to cut backlog
19 May 2024, 12:14 | Updated: 19 May 2024, 13:03
Wes Streeting has vowed to create two million more NHS appointments within the first year of a Labour government, as he announced a raft of reforms to cut waiting lists.
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Labour's Shadow Health Secretary told LBC's Lewis Goodall that the NHS "is not the envy of the world", adding that "it's not just on its knees - it's on its face."
The opposition party has announced a series of proposed reforms to the NHS to cut waiting lists, including running evening and weekend surgeries, with staff and resources pooled across a region.
Patients will also be offered appointments at nearby hospitals, rather than necessarily at their local one, allowing them to be treated faster.
Mr Streeting said: "We are going to use an approach tried and tested at a very small number of hospitals, including the London Hospital… and make that available to patients right across the country."
NHS staff will be compensated for the extra work they will be expected to do, with "an extra £1.1bn going into [their] pockets," Mr Streeting said.
"We’ll also be pooling waiting lists across regions to make best the best use of staff capacity and also the facilities- operating theatres, scanners and doing that we will make a real difference, quickly," he said.
"We can get 40,000 extra appointments every week within the first year of a Labour government – that’s two million a year, will make a real difference."
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It comes at the same time as Shadow Chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced an expected £10 billion compensation package for victims of the NHS infected blood scandal, which killed thousands of people.
Referring to the scandal, Mr Streeting said: "I've been brutally honest about the state of the NHS, making it clear it is a service, not a shrine. It is not the envy of the world. It's not just on its knees, it's on its face.
"And it needs serious reform and modernisation. Otherwise, it's not going to be there for us in the future.
"I'm absolutely determined to make sure that we have that culture of honesty and openness, because if you can't be honest about the problem, how can you be trusted to solve it?"
Mr Streeting also said that the NHS was over-reliant on migrant workers, with Labour to "start training our own homegrown talent".
He added: "We are recruiting as a country from red list countries that have been identified by the World Health Organisation as having real shortages. So I think that is unethical and immoral actually.
"Secondly, we are turning away thousands of straight-A students from studying medicine at university, which seems crazy and unfair to them.
"And thirdly, there is a global shortage of health care workers. So in terms of thinking about Britain's long term security, in terms of health and care workforce, we shouldn't assume that that pool of international workers will always be there to draw on".
He said that the NHS "will always have an international workforce", a fact he is "proud of".
"But we've got to make sure we're getting the proportion right."
Writing earlier in the Telegraph, Mr Streeting said: "Fourteen years of Conservative neglect has seen waiting lists treble and, despite Rishi Sunak's promise, they are still rising.
"Only Labour has a plan to reform our NHS, get hospitals working together with shared waiting lists and staff, to get patients treated on time again."
The opposition believes it can raise the money for the reforms through clamping down on tax dodgers and tightening up the rules on non-domiciled people.
Labour highlighted the way staff at Guys and St Thomas's in London used a high-intensity theatre (HIT) list to more efficiently perform more procedures.
The HIT list system involves increasing the number of anaesthetic, surgical and theatre staff in order to minimise the turnaround time between cases.
By using two theatres at the same time, surgeons can be operating at the same time as their next patient is being prepared and anaesthetised.
While on a normal working day they can perform three knee surgeries for patients, they get through 12 when doing a HIT list.
The HIT lists focus on one type of procedure at a time, and take place at weekends.
But Labour research indicated more than half of England's hospitals close operating theatres at the weekends.
According to a Labour Party Freedom of Information request last year, hospitals performed an average of 795 procedures on weekdays, but just 176 on Saturdays or Sundays.
Mr Streeting said: "We will learn from the great innovations already happening in the health service, and take the best of the NHS to the rest of the NHS.
"That's how Labour will cut NHS waiting times with 40,000 more evening and weekend appointments each week, paid for by clamping down on tax dodgers and non-dom loopholes."
The promise to cut NHS waiting lists was one of the "first steps" for a Labour government set out by Sir Keir Starmer.
The Tories repeated their claim that Labour will have to raise taxes to fill a £38.5 billion hole in their spending commitments.
Conservative Party chairman Richard Holden said: "While Labour would increase your taxes, the Conservatives are making progress on cutting the NHS waiting lists which have fallen by around 200,000 since September 2023, the biggest six-month fall in over 10 years outside the pandemic.
"Rishi Sunak and the Conservatives are sticking with the plan which is working, helping patients get the care they need more quickly so they can lead healthy and happy lives."
