THE NHS is worse than other nations’ health services and will take a decade to fix, Labour warned today.
Shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting, said our hospitals rank poorly and called for reform of GPs and community clinics.
PAShadow health secretary Wes Streeting laid out his vision for fixing the NHS at a speech in London[/caption]
He said: “Relative to other healthcare systems, we are either at the bottom, near the bottom or seriously lagging behind.
“Whether it’s cancer outcomes, emergency service responses, emergency department waiting times, we’re barely in the races in terms of competing with other leading economies.”
He said in a speech at the King’s Fund think-tank that Britain is “top of the table” for hospital spending but “near the bottom” on funding GPs, mental health and tests and scans.
Ambulance and A&E delays hit record highs last winter and some cancer patients are waiting over a year to start treatment.
Data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development show cancer survival is lower in the UK than in similar countries including France, Germany and the US.
Meanwhile, health chiefs face another nurses’ strike next weekend and the threat of more junior doctors’ walkouts with union pay talks in stalemate.
Labour this week laid out its vision for fixing the NHS but admitted it would take 10 years to get it running smoothly again.
Mr Streeting said: “Despite all the challenges we see in the NHS today, it is still salvageable.
“The public is smart enough to know that we’re not going to be able to fix everything overnight.
“I think it will take a decade to get the NHS back to where it was under the last Labour government.
“But I would want to see serious progress within the first term and we’re looking at what we could do as quickly as possible to deliver immediate results for patients.
“I think we would start with the patient experience in primary care and we’ve got to turn around the situation in cancer care.”
Beccy Baird, senior fellow at The King’s Fund, said: “There has been a clear consensus for more than 30 years, under successive governments, that moving care from hospital to communities is the right thing to do.
“The challenge is making this actually happen – previous attempts have failed spectacularly.”
Critics in the Government said Labour’s plans to build a “neighbourhood health service” and bolster community care would need thousands more medics to fill a staffing “black hole”.
A source close to Health Secretary Steve Barclay said: “Labour’s ideas are undeliverable and would bring chaos to GP surgeries, worsening the 8am scramble for an appointment.
“Meanwhile we’re boosting the GP workforce, with hundreds more doctors in general practice than last year, and we’ve almost reached our target of delivering 26,000 additional primary care staff to support GPs and patients.”