Do you suppose Keir Starmer can save the NHS? Take our ballot and have your say
Keir Starmer has pledged to fix an NHS wrecked by years of Conservative underfunding and harsh cuts – but do you think he can?
The Prime Minister is poised to reveal a ten-year plan for the service following a damning report from prominent surgeon Lord Ara Darzi, who says deliberate neglect and failed reforms have left the institution on its knees.
In a speech this morning, Starmer said the collapse in access to care and a decline in the nation’s health are “leading to avoidable deaths.”
Lord Darzi’s report has exposed the severe impact of 14 years of Conservative rule: A&E waiting times have doubled, patients are dying while waiting to be seen, access to care has plummeted, staff morale has reached rock bottom, and overall national health has got worse and worse.
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The review found the NHS has been chronically underfunded and hindered by poorly executed reforms. Starmer has pledged to rectify these issues within a decade and criticises the previous government’s continuous cuts, which left the NHS struggling during the Covid pandemic.
The PM will blast the damage as ‘unforgivable’, while emphasising the public’s right to be outraged.
“People have every right to be angry. It’s not just because the NHS is so personal to all of us, it’s because some of these failings are life and death,” he will say.
“Take A&E waiting times. That’s not just a source of fear and anxiety. It’s leading to avoidable deaths. People’s loved ones who could have been saved. Doctors and nurses whose whole vocation is to save them, hampered from doing so. It’s devastating.”
Starmer pledged to launch the “biggest reimagining of our NHS since its birth” in 1948. Surgeon and independent peer Lord Darzi said: “Although I have worked for the NHS for more than 30 years I have been shocked by what I found in this investigation. Not just in the health service but in the state of the nation’s health. We want to deliver high-quality care for all but far too many people are waiting too long and in too many clinical areas quality of care has gone backwards.”
Darzi’s 160-page report, completed in the initial eight weeks of the Labour government, reviewed 600 documents and pieces of analysis. It underscores how reduced capital spending on NHS infrastructure and equipment has hampered productivity, with annual spending increases over the past decade being the slowest since the NHS’s foundation in 1948. The report also highlights a deterioration in heart health and criticises the 2012 Health and Social Care Act for causing “lasting damage” by fragmenting the NHS and introducing competition over collaboration.
Darzi pointed out that the NHS faced three major shocks in the past 15 years: austerity, top-down reorganisation, and the pandemic, with two of these being the result of choices made in Westminster..
