NHS “Must be Reformed” to Deliver Care Patients Want says Wes Streeting

Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting has said the NHS must be reformed rather than “pouring more money into hospitals”

In a speech to the King s Fund in central London Wes Streeting reiterated Labour’s pledges on the NHS, saying the party would train 7,500 more doctors and 10 000 more nurses every year including recruiting more medics from within the UK

Mr Streeting said he would boost the range of health professionals working alongside GPs to ease pressure on primary care including more use of pharmacists to give things such as vaccinations wider use of nurses within practices and for example allowing opticians to refer people directly to eye specialists

Mr Streeting said: I think that despite all the challenges we see in the NHS today, it is still salvageable

And more than that there is enormous opportunity in this country with the strengths we have in life sciences technology and with the brilliant people that we have working in the NHS today

We have got to stop the obsession with simply pouring more money into hospitals we have to think about what the primary care system looks like and if we grab that mantle of reform, there is no reason why we can t turn the situation around and to see far better outcomes by the end of the first term of a Labour government ”

Beccy Baird Senior Fellow at The King s Fund said: There has been a clear consensus for more than 30 years, under successive governments, that moving care from hospital to communities is the right thing to do The challenge is making this actually happen Previous attempts to do this have failed spectacularly with levels of investment and workforce growing in hospitals yet stagnating or falling in primary and community care services

There is much to welcome in the broad aims announced by the Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care However translating these warm words into tangible change for patients will require radical reform across the whole health and care system From social care reform to fully engaging the voluntary sector to improving NHS buildings

More GPs will be key to driving this change but also vital will be the time and capacity from experienced GPs who are already under extreme pressure, to train more new GPs Efforts to retain these experienced staff are therefore critical to achieve the ambitions on recruitment It will also rest on the training, retaining and integrating of more paramedics district nurses physiotherapists and other professionals that support people in the community ’’

Dr Richard Van Mellaerts deputy chair of GPC England at the BMA said: “It’s welcome news that Labour recognises the pressures that GPs are under and is determined to use innovative ways of solving the workforce crisis No one can deny that GPs are working harder than ever to try and give patients the care they need but patient demand far outstrips GP capacity and staff are seriously struggling to keep up with this level of workload

“Mr Streeting is absolutely right that more community services are needed to relieve pressure on GPs and that medical places should be expanded so that more students can train in medicine

“While Labour acknowledges the time it will take to train extra staff – 10 years for a single GP – and that short-term solutions are desperately needed they can go further still Cutting back on red tape and granting greater autonomy to GPs are good ideas and may help to stem the flow of GPs leaving the profession, but do not go far enough In addition improving archaic NHS IT infrastructure crumbling NHS premises and scrapping the punitive imposition of the 2023/24 GP contract must also make the list

We agree with Mr Streeting that further decline is not inevitable We know what the NHS is capable of achieving but that the current Government has consistently failed to make it a reality; while patients and staff suffer the long-awaited workforce plan is still gathering dust Today’s speech offers a glimmer of hope for what general practice could become and the Government must follow this example and act now if primary care is to even survive ”