Following last week’s landslide election victory for the Labour party, the new Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has pledged to work alongside NHS staff and “turn our health service around.”
In his first speech as Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, who has been the MP for Ilford North since 2015, and became Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care in 2021, said: “From today, the policy of this department is that the NHS is broken.”
This, he said, is the experience of patients who are not receiving the care they deserve as well as of NHS staff who are giving their best.
Mr Streeting set out the Government’s intention to be honest about the challenges and serious about tackling them. Talks to end the junior doctors’ industrial action will begin this week.
He admits that this will take time: “We never pretended that the NHS could be fixed overnight.”
It will also take a team effort. “It will be the mission of my department, every member of this government, and the 1.4 million people who work in the NHS, to turn our health service around.
“We have done this before. When we were last in office, we worked hand in hand with NHS staff to deliver the shortest waits and highest patient satisfaction in history. We did it before, and together, we will do it again.”
