UK opposition leader Keir Starmer said he would make more use of the private sector to clear the waiting lists of the national health service and be ruthless with “bureaucratic nonsense” that he sees as the worst in its history.
(Bloomberg) —
UK opposition leader Keir Starmer said he would make more use of the private sector to clear the waiting lists of the national health service and be ruthless with “bureaucratic nonsense” that he sees as the worst in its history.
Writing in an article published in the Sunday Telegraph, he outlined a series of reforms that a Labour government would bring in, including doubling the number of graduating doctors and district nurses, as well as providing thousands more training placements for nurses, midwives and health visitors.
“The idea the service is still ‘the envy of the world’ is plainly wrong,” he wrote in the newspaper. “If we don’t get real about reform, the NHS will die,” he said, adding a decade of poor planning meant the situation for patients is now “intolerable and dangerous.”
The comments, coming ahead of a fresh round of strikes over pay planned by nurses this week, are a challenge to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak who has made cutting down NHS waiting lists one of his key priorities. Sunak’s government is refusing to budge on granting NHS workers an average of a 4% pay rise, whereas nurses are asking for about 19%.
The Labour leader followed up in an interview on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg show to say that the private sector had to be used “effectively” to clear waiting lists, while the service should always be free at the point of use.
“For me, it’s not the private sector that is the reform we’re looking for — I want a preventative model,” he said.
The NHS is facing one of its worst winter crises. After almost three years of dealing with the pandemic, staff are exhausted and accident and emergency departments are no longer able to meet demand.
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