How dare Wes Streeting call the NHS winter crisis an ‘excuse’ for more cash?

‘Mr Streeting has repeatedly demonstrated a limited understanding of the reality of what the healthcare service is facing,’ says Joseph McFarlane. Photograph: Joel Goodman/The Guardian

As a Labour voter and GP, I was baffled to hear comments from the shadow health secretary (Wes Streeting says NHS uses winter crisis as excuse to ask for more money, 10 December) that the NHS is “using every winter crisis and challenge it faces as an excuse to ask for more money”, and that “waste and inefficiency need to be addressed”.

In comparison with other OECD countries, the UK has vastly fewer hospital beds. Furthermore, the UK has what the King’s Fund called “strikingly low numbers” of clinical staff.