Has Wes Streeting started off on the right foot for the NHS?

In many ways, Labour Party leader Keir Starmer’s transition to prime minister has looked seamless. The first few days of his leadership were well planned, as he swiftly recruited his ministers into position with no major hiccups, and provided few surprises among his appointments. He was keen to let us all know that he and his team were getting straight to work, when they – including new NHS health secretary Wes Streeting – assembled in Downing Street for their first cabinet meeting, on a Saturday – in an unusual move.

The decision was clever, because it allowed no void in the media reporting, no opportunity for doubt or criticism as he got his feet under the table. Quite the opposite: a weekend cabinet meeting created photo opportunities for a cabinet who looked poised, united, and energised.

This was impressive to see, because after a long six weeks on the campaign trail, you’d imagine that these politicians wanted to take a few days off to rest, reflect, and regroup before arriving in parliament.

Unfortunately for them, they didn’t get a break at all. Keir Starmer has been keen to let us know that they’ll get stuck in immediately, to get started on important work before parliament’s summer recess.

Broken Britain

Many of us in the campaigning sphere had received this message loud and clear, and as we saw those photos of the new ministers entering Downing Street and sitting around its long table, we wondered what the first items for discussion would be. Labour, after all, have inherited a broken country, with innumerable areas which deserve immediate attention as they take the helm.

In the NHS alone, there are dozens of issues which this new government needs to tackle, and we have waited a very long time for a group of politicians to come and do just that.

Things are so bad now that the NHS in England alone has an unmet repair bill of almost £12bn, and we are missing 121,000 NHS staff in England. I don’t need to tell you about the waiting lists, on which millions and millions of people are waiting, unable to access the treatment they need.

So I thought I’d let you know what Keir Starmer and Wes Streeting have prioritised in their very first week, and whether their actions have been well-targeted.

Wes Streeting: junior doctors and primary care

Firstly, let’s talk about the NHS junior doctor strikes.

I’m sure you know that these strikes have been dragging on for a very long time, because doctors (and all NHS staff) were treated absolutely appallingly by the Conservative government. The staff are fighting for pay restoration to make their pay more fair, and to ensure that the NHS itself is protected. After all, we cannot hope to have an excellent health service if the staff are hugely underpaid.

The striking doctors are taking action to help all of us.

Wes Streeting had announced prior to election day that resolving the strikes would be a priority of his, and he’s kept his word. He held a meeting with the BMA, and it looks like things went positively. An agreement has not yet been reached, however, and we’ll have to watch to see what happens next.

Streeting has also prioritised primary care in his first few days as health secretary, visiting a GP surgery in London with the chief executive of NHS England, Amanda Pritchard, and explaining that he wants to improve things. This would be a welcome commitment, because GP services have been woefully under-resourced in recent years.

A recent survey from the BMA for example showed that four out of five locum GPs in England cannot find work, despite many patients struggling to see their GP at the moment. It was alarming to see press coverage, however, which announced that Streeting plans to fund his plans for primary care by diverting billions from NHS hospitals.

The Labour government will not fix the NHS simply by moving money around; they need to commit to proper investment.

Keir Starmer and Wes Streeting: to close to Blair for the NHS’s liking

Wes Streeting also attended the “Tony Blair Institute for Global Change Future of Britain Conference” to give a speech. Some of his ideas are good, just as some of Labour’s plans for the NHS in general sound positive. They seem committed to longer-term thinking about the NHS, and want to invest in better technology and well-functioning community services.

But there are many who are feeling very worried about the proximity of Wes Streeting and prime minister Starmer to New Labour Blair and his allies. After all, Blair’s tenure in office led to many costly, inefficient Private Finance Initiative hospital building projects which we are still paying off (and will be doing so until 2050).

Starmer has chosen to push back parliamentary recess until the end of July, or even early August, in order to get started with crucial work in rebuilding things after 14 years of Conservative mismanagement and poor leadership.

We need them to take this work seriously, listen to experts and frontline NHS staff, and reject the creep of corporate interests into the NHS and elsewhere.

Featured image via UK government