‘We’re lastly placing the NHS on the street to restoration after years of Tory neglect’

Of all the crises this government inherited, one of the most urgent was the broken NHS.

The Conservatives left 7.6 million on waiting lists. People are waiting up to 18 months for treatment, worrying about a recently-discovered lump, the outcome of a test, or when they will be able to return to work.

The fundamental promise of the NHS, that it will be there for us when we need it, has been broken. 14 years of mismanagement, underinvestment, and neglect delivered the longest waiting times and lowest patient satisfaction in the history of the NHS.

Given the scale of the crisis in the NHS, growing numbers of people were saying it can never be fixed.

Kemi Badenoch now wants a “national conversation” about ending the principle that when you fall ill, you should never have to worry about the bill. Nigel Farage would rip up the NHS and introduce an insurance-based system instead.

It falls to this Labour government to prove that politics can be a force for good. Things can get better. After 14 years of rising waiting lists under the Tories, we are turning the tide.

We’ve hit the ground running since coming into office. Within three weeks we ended the junior doctors strike, putting NHS staff off the picket line and back on the front line.

Since the summer, the NHS has been sending crack teams of top clinicians to hospitals across the country, rolling out reformed ways of running surgeries, to bust the backlog faster.

Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves took some unpopular decisions at the Budget, but they were the right decisions. It is only because they acted that waiting lists are now falling.

At the general election, we promised the country two million more appointments in our first year, equivalent to 40,000 a week. That was the change that Mirror readers voted for.

When I walked into the department on 5th July, I was told that, far from delivering our first step, I would have to cut 20,000 appointments a week, such was the scale of the Tories fiscal black hole. Keir, Rachel, and I refused to accept that.

Thanks to the decisions the Chancellor took, we filled the black hole and gave our NHS the investment it needed. It is only because of that action, that I can announce today that we have delivered the two million extra operations, scans, and appointments the public voted for.

A promise made, and a promise kept. The result is around 160,000 fewer patients on waiting lists than six months ago. Those are 160,000 people who have been treated faster, back to health, back to work, and back to living their lives to the full. They would still be languishing on a waiting list under the Tories. That’s the difference a Labour government makes.

We said the two million more appointments would be our first step. We’ve delivered seven months earlier than we pledged. But it’s not enough- we are pressing down on the accelerator, going further and faster.

The investment made at the budget will see 17 new surgical hubs opening this year, delivering 30,000 more procedures. Community diagnostic hubs will open at evenings and weekends on high streets and in shopping centres, so patients can arrange their tests and scans around the daily business.

And our reforms will cut millions of cancelled or pointless appointments, to make the NHS less wasteful and more productive. There’s a long way to go, but we are finally putting the NHS on the road to recovery. Change has begun, and the best is still to come.