Health Secretary Wes Streeting has vowed he will declare war on NHS ‘wokery’ and ‘nonsense’ – while its chairman has branded parts of the service ‘unsafe’.
Mr Streeting said the health service has got to ‘stop doing daft nonsense’, such as erasing the word ‘woman’ from ‘many NHS documents’ and a member of staff tweeting that her job involved ‘anti-whiteness’.
He said the NHS ‘can’t afford to be distracted by ideologues’, writing in the Sun on Sunday: ‘I have told the NHS to get back to basics.’
The NHS will instead focus on the ‘fundamentals’, Mr Streeting said. He added that this would include cutting waiting times for operations, A&E and ambulances, as well as making it easier to see a GP or NHS dentist, and improving the nation’s mental health.
Meanwhile, departing chairman of NHS England has warned he calls the health service unsafe, sclerotic and warned of sewage in handbasins.
Richard Meddings also lambasted crumbling hospital infrastructure, bureaucratic inefficiencies, and financial constraints which have left wards unsafe and patients stranded.
Mr Meddings, who resigned under pressure from the health secretary in October, said he was ‘disappointed’ and ‘dismayed’ to be leaving his role.
During his tenure, he witnessed firsthand the dire conditions of NHS facilities, including situations where hospitals had to shut down operating theatres and wards due to safety risks.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting (pictured) has said the NHS ‘can’t afford to be distracted by ideologues’ in a war on wokery
Outgoing NHS England chairman Richard Meddings (pictured) slammed crumbling hospital infrastructure and financial constraints which have left wards unsafe and patients stranded
‘I can’t remember the number of incidents we’ve had where we’ve closed operating theatres or wards because they’ve become unsafe. You’ve got some hospitals where you’ve got sewage coming up through the washbasins. It cannot be like this,’ he said.
The backlog of maintenance in the NHS has soared to a staggering £13.8 billion, more than doubling in less than a decade.
This capital shortfall has exacerbated challenges in delivering effective patient care, with Meddings pointing out a severe shortage of beds. He highlighted that England’s population has grown by 15 per cent since 2000, while the number of hospital beds has shrunk by a third.
‘Go to [an emergency department] and you will see paper-tissue-thin fragile elderly people lying in the cubicles or sometimes on trolleys waiting to be admitted,’ he told the Sunday Times.
‘We can’t admit them – one, because of the bed cut, but two, can we get them out at the other end? So much of that waiting time comes from the fact that you can’t get flow through the hospitals,’ he said.
Mr Meddings has been particularly frustrated by the layers of bureaucracy in NHS spending approval, describing it as ‘sclerotic.’
He pointed to the pledge by Boris Johnson to build 40 hospitals, which required ministerial sign-off for expenditures over £500,000.
‘It feels like government is a series of concentric circles of negative control. When you go through a major programme, you have multiple sign-offs at very low spending levels.
Mr Meddings highlighted that the number of hospital beds has shrunk by a third, while England’s population has increased by 15 per cent since 2000 (file image)
‘On one hand that’s sensible, because you must spend the money wisely, but on the other hand it’s sclerotic.
‘There’s a bias that thinks financial control is handing out money in small parcels. In reality, it can undermine financial control because it elongates the project and you bring in a greater risk of inflation or other challenges. You don’t execute at pace.’
While Chancellor Rachel Reeves allocated an additional £22.6 billion for NHS day-to-day spending, Meddings warned that the increase in employer national insurance contributions would indirectly cost the NHS about £2 billion in support.
‘There’s an indirect but real impact. It’s like water seeping under the door,’ he said.
Mr Meddings, a former director at Credit Suisse, Standard Chartered and TSB, was appointed as the NHS England chairman in 2022 by Sajid Javid, the Conservative health secretary at the time.
He was appointed on a four year contract but will now be leaving his post one year early in March- amid widespread claims that Mr Streeting is keen to replace him with a Labour loyalist from the party’s previous spell in government under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown to give the government more control over NHS England.
Figures suggested as possible replacements for Mr Meddings include former Labour Health Secretary Alan Milburn, former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith and Sally Morgan, Tony Blair’s political secretary.