Wes Streeting
MP for Ilford North · Labour · United Kingdom
“We hope for the best and plan for the worst in terms of the continuation of this war, but we are also actively working to prepare for conditions in which a ceasefire has been agreed by Ukraine, with Ukraine and, from our perspective, for Ukraine.”
“The threats we face are not only evolving; they are getting closer to home. Every day, the UK and our allies encounter espionage, cyber-attacks and military posturing by hostile states.”
“One discipline I have to bring to the Ministry of Defence, drawing on my experience at the Department of Health and Social Care and the NHS, is to ensure there is no culture of routine overspending, that we are improving productivity, that we deliver value for money and that we recognise that the money we are investing in defence comes wi…”
“With permission, I will make my first statement to the House as Secretary of State for Defence on Ukraine, the ongoing threat from Russia and the Government’s approach. It is not yet clear whether freedom or tyranny will define the 21st century. What is clear is that the United Kingdom will not be a bystander in that struggle.”
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that very serious and important issue. She will understand that, as a matter of policy, I will not comment on intelligence, but I will address the reports she has raised.”
“We know that this Prime Minister and this Chancellor are both fully committed to funding our nation’s defence, including meeting our NATO commitment of 3.5% by 2035 and setting out an earlier 3% commitment at the next spending review.”
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“I am delighted that the shadow Secretary of State has so generously given way. I am not going to pre-empt the Chancellor’s announcements at the Budget and the spending review, but I say to her that the reason why so many of the things she said at this Dispatch Box as Secretary of State were a pile of nonsense is that they were plans built on a pillar of sand—a £22 billion black hole for which she and her party are yet to apologise. Will she do that now?”
“Every person I have met in the NHS during my first two months as Health and Social Care Secretary is up for the challenge. It will take time, but this party—the party that created the NHS—has turned the NHS around before, and we will do it again. I commend this statement to the House.”
“It means stopping the targeting of junk food ads at children, banning energy drinks for under-16s, reforming the NHS to catch illness earlier—starting by offering health checks in workplaces and on smartphones—and delivering the Tobacco and Vapes Bill that the Conservatives failed to pass, to tackle one of society’s biggest killers. Lord Darzi’s diagnosis is that the NHS is in a “critical condition”—unless we perform major surgery, the patient will die—but he also finds that “its vital signs are strong”: an extraordinary depth of clinical talent, and a shared determination to improve care for patients. This is a public service, free at the point of use, so that whenever we fall ill we never have to worry about the bill. The NHS is broken, but it is not beaten.”
“Secondly, there is the shift from hospital to community, turning our NHS into a neighbourhood as much as a national health service so that patients can get their tests and scans on their high streets and be cared for from the comfort of their own homes. That means bringing back the family doctor and building a national care service that can be there for us when we need it, able to meet the challenges of this century. Thirdly, there is the shift from sickness to prevention, which means taking the decisions that the Conservatives ducked to give our children a healthy, happy start in life.”
“Friend the Prime Minister confirmed that the Government would publish a 10-year plan for change and modernisation, on the foundation of Lord Darzi’s report. Our plan will deliver the three big shifts needed to make our NHS fit for the future. The first is from analogue to digital, giving patients proper choice and control over their own healthcare, and finally realising the untapped potential of the NHS app. There will be fully digital patient records so that your surgeon can see the notes that your GP writes. By marrying our country’s leading scientific minds with the care of more than 1.5 million NHS staff, we will put NHS patients at the front of the queue for cutting-edge medicines and treatments that we can only imagine today.”
“Or we could—as some of my critics on the left demand—pour ever-increasing amounts of money in without reform, wasting money that is not there and that working people cannot afford to pay. That would be wasteful and irresponsible, so we will not take that path. This Government are making a different choice: we choose recovery and reform. We are taking action today to deal with the immediate crisis by hiring 1,000 GPs whom the Conservatives had left without a job while patients were going without an appointment, and agreeing an offer to end the strikes that they allowed to cripple our health service. At the same time, we will introduce the fundamental reforms needed to secure the future of our NHS. Earlier today, my right hon.”
“The effective reforms of the last Labour Government, which drove better performance and better care for patients, have mostly been undone, and that is why patients cannot get a GP appointment, an operation or even an ambulance when they need one today. That is what the Conservatives did to take the NHS from the shortest waiting times and highest patient satisfaction in history to the broken NHS that we see today. Lord Darzi has given his diagnosis. Now it is over to us to write the prescription, and we have three choices. The first is to continue the Conservatives’ neglect, and allow the NHS to collapse. That is the path on which they set the NHS, and the path that it is on today.”
“At great expense to the taxpayer, the NHS has instead seen a huge fall in productivity. We paid more, but got less—a deplorable waste of resources when so many parts of our health and care services were crying out for investment. As Lord Darzi has put it: “British Airways wouldn’t train more pilots without buying more planes.” Doctors and nurses are wasting their time trying to find beds for their patients and dealing with outdated IT when they ought to be treating patients. Too many people end up in hospital because they cannot get the help that they need from a pharmacy, a GP or social care.”
“As Lord Darzi writes: “The pandemic’s impact was magnified because the NHS had been seriously weakened in the decade preceding its onset.” In other words, it is not just that the Conservatives did not fix the roof while the sun was shining; they doused the house in petrol and left the gas on, and covid just lit the match. That is why waiting lists have ballooned to 7.6 million today. [Interruption.] If I were an Opposition Member, I would not complain about the diagnosis. I would take responsibility. Fourthly—this sits firmly at Opposition Members’ door, so they should sit and listen—there was the failure to reform. From 2019 onwards, the previous Government oversaw a 17% increase in the number of staff working in hospitals. Did it lead to better outcomes for patients? No.”
““Rather than liberating the NHS, as promised, the Health and Social Care Act 2012 imprisoned more than a million NHS staff in a broken system for the best part of a decade”. “the effects…are still felt to this day.” Just imagine if all the time, effort and billions of pounds wasted on dissolving and reconstituting management structures had instead been invested in services for patients—clearly, the NHS would not be in the mess it finds itself in today. Thirdly, there was coronavirus. Everyone can see the lasting damage caused by the pandemic, but until now we did not know that the pandemic hit the NHS harder than any other comparable healthcare system in the world. The NHS cancelled far more operations and routine care than anywhere else.”
“First, a decade of under-investment left the NHS 15 years behind the private sector on technology, with fewer diagnostic scanners per patient than almost every comparable country, including Belgium, Italy and Greece, and in 2024 mental health patients are treated in Victorian buildings with cockroach and mouse infestations, where 17 men are forced to share two showers. Secondly, there was the disastrous 2012 top-down reorganisation overseen by Lord Lansley. Lord Darzi’s assessment is damning: “A calamity without international precedent…it took a ‘scorched earth’ approach to health reform”. “By 2015…ministers were…putting in place ‘workarounds and sticking plasters’ to bypass the legislation”.”
“He has uncovered an enormous charge sheet, too long to list in this statement, so these are just a few: the NHS has not been able to meet its promises to treat patients on time for almost a decade; patients have never been more dissatisfied with the service they receive; waiting lists for mental health and community services have surged; 50 years of progress on cardiovascular disease is going into reverse; and cancer is more likely to be a death sentence for NHS patients than for patients in other countries. It is not just the sickness in the NHS that concerns Lord Darzi, but sickness in society. Children are sicker today than a decade ago and adults are falling into ill health earlier in life. That is piling pressure on to the NHS and holding back our economy. Those are some of the symptoms; the report is equally damning on the causes.”
“With permission, I would like to make a statement on Lord Darzi’s investigation into the NHS. Unlike the last holders of this office, this Government will be honest about the problems the NHS faces and serious about fixing them. That is why I asked Lord Darzi, an eminent cancer surgeon who served both Labour and Conservative-led Governments with distinction, to conduct an independent investigation into the state of our national health service. I am sure the whole House will want to join me in thanking him for producing this expert, comprehensive report, a copy of which I have placed in the Libraries of both Houses. I told Lord Darzi that we wanted hard truths, warts and all. His findings are raw, honest and breathtaking. He says: “Although I have worked in the NHS for more than 30 years, I have been shocked by what I have found”.”
“Otherwise, why should anyone trust what the Conservatives have to say ever again? This Government were given a mandate for change, and nowhere is that more needed than in our NHS. The report must mark the beginning of the long, hard work of change. It is the platform from which we will launch a decade of reform that will make sure that the NHS can be there for us when we need it—for us, our children and our grandchildren. It must draw a line in the sand, so that we never go back to the pain, fear and misery that the Conservative party inflicted on millions of patients.”
“She talks about the decisions made by NICE; that was a new Labour reform and modernisation—one that thankfully survived the last 14 years. The right hon. Lady has endorsed the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) in the Conservative party leadership election. I wonder what she makes of his admission that the Conservatives failed to make the tough reforms that the NHS needed because they were afraid of what Labour might say. Is that not the most derisory excuse for 14 years of neglect? My predecessor does not bear responsibility for everything in the Darzi report—this crisis was more than a decade in the making—but I wonder when the right hon. Lady will show some humility on behalf of her party and apologise for the mess that her Government made of our national health service.”
“The first word that the shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care should have said was “sorry”. She says that she never pretended everything was fixed, and that is true, but it is about time that she admitted that it was her party that broke the NHS in the first place. In fact, it has been a feature of debate in the House since the general election that the Opposition have taken absolutely no responsibility for the mess they left our country in, including a £22 billion black hole and the new hospitals programme that the right hon. Lady referred to, in which the timetables were a work of fiction and the money ran out in March. She knew that when she went to the country to claim that the programme was fully funded.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right that our country has stark health inequalities. It is not right that people who live in different parts of the country have such different chances of living well. A girl born in Blackpool can expect to live healthily until she is 54, whereas a girl born in Winchester can expect to live healthily until she is 66. That is why, with the Prime Minister’s mission-driven approach, we will not just get our NHS back on its feet and make sure it is fit for the future; we will also reduce the cost and burden of demand on our national health service by attacking the social determinants of ill health.”
“How refreshing to have constructive opposition in the Chamber. It was clear throughout the election campaign that my party and the Liberal Democrats have much in common, both in the commitments we made, which in some cases were identical, and in our shared areas of emphasis: the link between health and wealth, the importance of prevention and the importance of social care. As the Prime Minister reiterated again this morning, we are absolutely determined to address both the short-term crisis and the long-term needs of the century in our social care system. We want to work on a cross-party basis wherever possible, so I would be delighted to meet the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.”
“It sticks in the craw to hear the carping and criticism from the Conservatives, and their obvious bitter resentment that we were able to do in three weeks what they failed to do in over a year. All the while they complain about the costs of solving the strikes, they say nothing about the costs they racked up—the direct financial costs of covering the strikes, as well as the untold costs of misery to patients whose operations, procedures and appointments were cancelled, even as the shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and her Ministers had not even bothered to meet the junior doctors since March this year. The Conservatives have no grounds to complain.”
“I look forward to working with every devolved Administration to improve health and care outcomes across the whole of our United Kingdom.”
“Regardless of the fact that there is a Scottish National party Government in Scotland or a unique arrangement in Northern Ireland, as well my friends in the Welsh Government, I am proud that in my first weekend as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, I made it my business to phone my counterparts in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. I made it clear that we will always work constructively, whatever our parties and however hard we will fight each other at the ballot box. Rather than pointing fingers at other parts of the United Kingdom, as the Conservatives did when they were in government, this Government are determined, just as the last Labour Government were, to create a rising tide that lifts all ships.”
“I have never denied, nor have the Welsh Government, that our health and social care systems are in crisis across the United Kingdom, and that waiting times and patient outcomes are not where they should be. [ Interruption. ] The Conservatives do not wish to acknowledge the truth, and even now, without a shred of humility or acceptance of the responsibility of their record in government, they carp from the sidelines. They will not admit or accept that different parts of the United Kingdom have different strengths and weaknesses.”
“They have not learned anything, they have not got the message and they are not going to change.”
“My hon. Friend has done a lot of work in this area and I would be delighted to meet her. Let me give the Conservative party a lesson in humility. However proud I am of the last Labour Government—and I am incredibly proud of what they did to our health estate, the investment they brought in, through a range of different types of private financing, and the impact that had; I can see the benefits in my own constituency— I have never shied away from what we did not get right. At the same time as celebrating what we got right in government, we must reflect on what we did not get right and genuinely learn those lessons, which is what we did in opposition. It took us too long to get back into government—we will learn from that for the future—but it has been really interesting to listen to Conservative Members over the past nine weeks.”
“I gently point the hon. Gentleman to the bold claims made by the now shadow Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Godalming and Ash (Jeremy Hunt), about patient safety. He might like to reflect on every subsequent patient safety scandal. In fact, he might want to walk into maternity services across the country and ask himself whether the Conservatives bothered to learn lessons on patient safety.”
“My hon. Friend makes a great point, and he has given great service to the Public Accounts Committee of this House by drilling into waste, inefficiency and exploitation of the public purse. I want to work with the great life sciences sector and pharmaceutical industry in this country and globally, but in a spirit of genuine partnership. A really good working relationship requires social responsibility; it certainly involves not ripping off the taxpayer.”
“Fiscal policy is a matter for the Chancellor. I know on which side my bread is buttered, so I will not write her Budget or spending review now, but let me reassure the hon. Gentleman that, notwithstanding the £22 billion black hole that the Conservatives left in the public finances this year and the weak foundations of our economy that we have inherited, the Chancellor knows as well as I do that it is investment and reform that will deliver results. It will take time—we cannot reverse more than a decade of underinvestment in a single Budget or even a single spending review—but at least we have a Government able to face up to the hard choices and capable of making them.”
“We have settled—I hope; we await the outcome of the ballot—the junior doctors’ dispute, so we can remove the cost of disruption and industrial action and start work on getting the waiting lists down. We will be working at pace to deliver 40,000 more appointments every week so that we can cut waiting lists, and 700,000 urgent emergency dentistry appointments so that we can ensure that people get the care they need. Every single promise in our manifesto, notwithstanding the challenges in the public finances, was a fully costed, fully funded promise that we will keep and that the country can afford.”
“My hon. Friend, who I am delighted to see representing Bassetlaw, is already showing herself to be an outstanding champion for her community. She raises a really good challenge that we all face as constituency MPs: the public recognise that change takes time and that we cannot fix more than a decade of problems in the immediate future, but they want to know that at least we are hitting the ground running and getting the job done. I can reassure my hon. Friend’s constituents in Bassetlaw that within our first couple of months, this Government employed 1,000 more GPs on the frontline who had been left unemployed by the previous Conservative Government. We did that pretty much immediately.”
“It is the responsibility of this Government to take the best of the NHS to the rest of the NHS. That is exactly what we will do.”
“I thank the hon. Gentleman for his constructive approach. The tragedy of the Health and Care Act 2022 was that a large part of its focus was on trying to correct the enormous damage done by Lord Lansley through a top-down reorganisation that nobody wanted and that the country could not afford. That is why I have said very clearly that we will not repeat the mistakes of top-down reorganisation. With the architecture of the system, we will take an approach of evolution rather than counter-revolution. On the hon. Gentleman’s point about learning from what is working well in the NHS, what gives me great hope for the future of our national health service is that every day there are amazing people providing great-quality care, reforming, innovating and showing us what the future looks like.”
“For all the innovations that modern technology will bring—the revolution in big data AI, machine learning and medical advances that we will see very soon but can scarcely imagine today—health and social care will always be fundamentally a people-based service. If you do not value your people, you lose them and end up in the appalling situation that we are in today. We have invested so much money and time in training people who imagined a long future for themselves in the NHS but who, because of the reality to which they were subjected by the previous Government, are now packing up and moving into different careers—or to other continents. We are determined not just to recruit the great staff we need, but to value and retain the brilliant staff we already have.”
“I would be delighted to meet her to talk about the genesis of the taskforce and how we can take forward the outcomes that she wants to see. What we are trying to avoid is a plethora of taskforces, and the risk that there has sometimes been—this is not a party political point, because this spans successive Governments—of taskforces being an alternative for action. I know that she wants action, so let us meet and see what we can do together.”
“Absolutely. I thank the hon. Member for the way she put her question. I send my deepest condolences to Sophie’s family on what will inevitably be a difficult day—I suspect just the latest of many difficult days—on the imaginable pain, grief and loss that they have suffered. I thank the hon. Member for her work over many years campaigning on children’s cancer in this House on behalf of her constituents and so many other families affected by young cancer. The pause is because we are looking at the breadth of the work of the Department to make sure that we have the right vehicles to deliver the outcomes that we want. That is why we have paused rather than cancelled, slammed or criticised the work that she was doing.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We need to make sure that we have the right staff in the right place and an equitable distribution of access to NHS services right across the country. We also want to shift from the hospital-centred NHS that we see today to a neighbourhood-centred service. That is why we have acted immediately to put 1,000 more GPs on the frontline before the end of this year. I am looking forward to working with GPs to expand access to primary care right across the country, especially in communities that are particularly under-served.”
“I can absolutely reassure the hon. Member that RAAC-impacted hospitals are a priority. We are putting safety first, and it is just a shame that when his residents had a Prime Minister in their backyard, the Conservative Government did not fix the problem.”
“The real game changer is genuine cross-departmental working, alongside business, civil society and all of us as active citizens, to mobilise the whole country in pursuit of that national mission, in which we will be tough on ill health, and tough on the causes of ill health, as someone might have said.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for her question and congratulate her warmly on her election to the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee. I am looking forward to sharing, through the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the work that our Departments are doing together, particularly on the link between mental health and unemployment and on integrating pathways. She is right about the social determinants of ill health. That is why I am genuinely excited that, through the mission-driven approach that the Prime Minister has set out, we are already bringing together Whitehall Departments, traditionally siloed, to work together on attacking those social determinants.”
“There is huge potential there that we must unlock, but that does not mean that we cannot learn from the way that other countries organise care, particularly in the community and particularly social care. This week, I met virtually with my friend the Health Minister in Singapore. I will continue to work with my international counterparts to learn from other countries whose health outcomes are far better than ours.”
“Every time the right hon. Gentleman praises my zeal for NHS reform, Labour Members get very nervous. Let me reassure him that I have looked at other countries, and I will definitely continue to do that. I genuinely do not think that it is the model of funding that is the issue—the publicly funded, public service element. I hope that he knows me well enough to understand that if I did think so, I would be more than happy making, and would quite enjoy taking on, the argument, but I think that the equitable principle that underpins our NHS is one that we should cherish and protect. The single-payer model has enormous potential for the century of big data, AI, and machine learning.”
“I am delighted to see my hon. Friend in her place. She is absolutely right. We will take Lord Darzi’s diagnosis to write the prescription and ensure that our reform agenda benefits every part of the country—not just big cities and the wealthiest communities—so that every person, wherever they are from, grow up and live, has access to the very best health and care services.”
“Of course we seek to work constructively with all trade unions representing staff across our health and care services, and also with the royal colleges. We want to work in a spirit of partnership, and we are only able to do so because people sent Labour MPs to Parliament to replace the Conservatives.”
“I am really grateful to my hon. Friend for her question. She has a huge amount of expertise in health and care, and she is absolutely right about the need for that shift. I have made it very clear to ICB leaders and to trusts across the country that I want more focus on secondary prevention, which means much more activity in the neighbourhood. I know that she will keep on championing these causes. She is a good critical friend, and I know that she will hold my feet to the fire to ensure that I deliver.”
“I am not sure that is a fair characterisation of Sir John Bell’s position. I have a huge amount of respect for him. I am grateful to Lord Darzi for writing the diagnosis. Given that the Conservative party was in government for 14 years, repeatedly promised to rebuild Hillingdon hospital and left my Department in a position where the money for the new hospitals programme ran out in March, the hon. Member has some brass neck to point the finger at us while he is in opposition.”
“I am delighted to see my hon. Friend here. His constituents can already see that he is not backwards in coming forwards. He will stand up and champion their interests in this House as a great constituency MP. When it comes to the Conservative party, sorry seems to be the hardest word.”
“I am so grateful for that question, not least because it gives me the chance as a constituency MP to say a huge thank you to St Francis hospice and Haven House children’s hospice for the care they provide to constituents, like so many other hospices around the country. I know that the sector is under real pressure. We look forward to working with the sector throughout the period of the spending review and the 10-year plan, not only to support our hospices but to improve end-of-life care, which is pertinent to debates that I know this House and the other place will have about how we ensure a good death for everyone, in every part of the country.”
“First, my hon. Friend is right that we should celebrate and thank staff who are doing an outstanding job against a very difficult set of circumstances. On his second point, we have to ensure that, on the tech side, we unlock productivity in the system. Having literally sat looking over the shoulder of GPs at their IT systems, I well understand those frustrations. For the benefit of all observers, there is sometimes a perception that I am up against NHS staff when it comes to reform. Actually, it is staff who are crying out for change.”
“What I have tried to build with NHS England in the last couple of months, with real joy in the process, is a real team between the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England, as well as the team across the country. I look forward to continuing to galvanise that team as we embark on the 10-year plan process.”
“The Minister for Secondary Care was whispering in my ear that it was her frustration with exactly the bureaucratic processes that the hon. Gentleman describes that led to her seeking election as a Member of Parliament to sort them out, so I defer to her on this one. On a serious note, he is right that wherever we find waste and inefficiency designed in, we must deal with it. I want to see an NHS that is more clinically led, free from political interference. We must also be honest: as it is such an enormous part of the public sector, which the public pay an enormous price for and value so much, there will always need to be an accountability relationship.”
“I am delighted to see my hon. Friend in her place, standing up for her communities in Penistone and Stocksbridge. In opposition, it was very frustrating watching successive Ministers promise better hold music for people trying to get through to their GP, rather than solving the problems of access. Fixing general practice, and building general practice so that it can meet the needs of this century, will be a vital part of our 10-year plan process.”