Keir Starmer today defended his plan to use private doctors to clear waiting lists - saying: “We’re not talking about privatising the NHS.”
The Labour leader said 233,000 more patients could have been seen in nine months if his plan to use spare private sector capacity had gone ahead.
He was confronted live on Sky News with his own 2020 leadership pledge to “end outsourcing in our NHS” - which he has dropped.
The pledge said “public services should be in public hands, not making profits for shareholders”.
Defending his U-turn, he told Sophy Ridge on Sunday: “We've got to acknowledge the health service is not just on its knees - it's on its face.”
He added: “As we sit here today, there are 7.2 million people on the waiting list. Speak to anyone who works in the NHS and they'll tell you just how stressed it is.
“My wife works in the NHS. So I know this first hand.”
Mr Starmer said Labour will review its approach to the NHS as part of a 10-year plan, which could include “a route for self-referral” to specialists - rather than all patients going through GPs.
He said it could also involve using local pharmacies more to look at prescriptions.
“We're not talking about privatising the NHS, we’re talking about using the private sector effectively,” he said.
But he said “we’re not going to back down” from a battle with doctors’ union the British Medical Association, which has criticised the plans.
He said: “There will always be people who say ‘I wouldn’t do that, I’d keep it as it is, don’t touch anything’.
“I totally disregard that. If there’s change to be made, we’ve got to get on and make it.”
He added: "Free at the point of use is an absolutely governing principle as we go into this review, but we do need change and reform.
"We're going to consult on this in the course of the coming months and then they'll be a 10-year plan for the NHS under the next Labour government.
"We're not going to back down the first time somebody says, well I wouldn't do that, I wouldn't change this."
Labour’s 233,000 figure is based on the independent sector doing 130% of pre-pandemic activity levels for the NHS, suggested by the Independent Healthcare Provider Network.
Mr Starmer said “outsourcing of some issues and functions I don't think has been very effective“, but the NHS “has always used GPs in private practice”.
He declined to say if he would offer nurses a 10% pay rise - down from their original ask of 19%, and a figure they’d reportedly accept.
Labour’s leader told Sky News: “There’s going to have to be compromise on both sides. I’m not going to sit here answering a hypothetical about the situation”.
It comes after it emerged Mr Starmer and his Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves will jet to a Davos summit to meet the global elite.
The pair will attend the World Economic Forum to send the message that Labour is the party of business.
Former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell also attended the summit in 2018 but said it was to tell the super-rich they were held in “contempt”.
It came as Rishi Sunak refused three times to answer if he uses private healthcare in a toe-curling interview.
The millionaire Prime Minister claimed it was not 'relevant' and a 'distraction from the real issue' as patients face an NHS crisis.
Royal College of Nursing general secretary Pat Cullen blasted: “He needed to come clean as a public servant… When you’re accountable to the public, you have to be honest with them.”
The PM also told people to stop “bandying around” claims that 300 to 500 people are dying a week due to “delays and problems with urgent and emergency care”.
The figure was highlighted by the head of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine.
Yet Mr Sunak said: “The NHS have themselves said they don’t recognise those numbers and would be careful about bandying them around.”
Meanwhile the Prime Minister refused to say he’d work in a care home for £18,000, saying: “The job I’m doing is making a difference to the country as Prime Minister.”
On the private sector in general he said “we should be making use of the independent sector, I don’t have any problem with that whatsoever.”
Top Tory Steve Barclay hinted NHS staff could get a pay rise.
But the Health Secretary will only do it for NEXT year - and only if staff get more “productive and efficient”.
