Labour MP Diane Abbott who clashed with ex-Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw over NHS reforms
(Picture: PA Wire)Infighting has erupted in Labour ranks over Sir Keir Starmer’s plans to reform the NHS.
Blairite MPs clashed with leftwingers over the future of the health service.
Diane Abbott, Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, tweeted: “Keir Starmer has joined the right in calling for the “reform” of the NHS. And we all know what that means.”
But she was quickly criticised by former Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw, MP for Exeter.
He messaged: “No, he’s leading the calls Diane, just as the @UKLabour government between 1997 & 2010 reformed the #NHS & delivered the shortest waiting times & the highest patient & staff satisfaction in the NHS’s history.”
Sir Keir is arguing that the NHS must reform in order to survive rather than fall into “managed decline”.
He told the Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme that he wants to examine “all sorts of reform” for the health service, as well as boosting funding to train thousands more nurses and doctors.
“It will always have to be free at the point of use, it of course should be a public service. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use effectively the private sector as well,” he added, stressing it could be used to cut waiting lists of more than seven million people.
He also proposed that patients might be able to self-refer to specialists for some conditions, such as back pain, rather than having to ask a GP to do that.
Meanwhile, the president of the Royal College of GPs said the NHS needs a “rethink” in how it deals with the public getting older with chronic disease.
Professor Dame Clare Gerada told Times Radio on Monday: “The problem with the NHS at the moment isn’t obesity, not really, and it isn’t really because we’re getting older, it’s actually because we’re getting older with chronic disease.
“So for the last 20 years of our life, most of us are suffering from three, four, five, even 10 long-term conditions and we’re living with those until our late 80s and early 90s.
“And the NHS was designed for a time when the average life expectancy was 67, when you tended to become unwell not long before that, and the NHS was geared up to provide acute care for those acute illnesses.”
She added: “Clearly what we need now is a rethink, not a top-down reorganisation, but a rethink about where the staff are, where staff are trained, where the resources are, how we develop what I would call cottage hospitals - we used to have them and they all got closed down.
“And how we actually deliver the two extremes of what patients need, which is one of acute necessary care, you break your leg, you’ve got an acute infection... but for the vast majority of patients today it’s the long-term chronic disease which isn’t really treated in a way that it should be.”
