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Wes Streeting has said NHS waiting lists need to fall by millions before the next general election.
The health secretary vowed to return the health service to its “constitutional standards” by the end of Labour’s first term in office, allowing A&E patients to be seen within four hours and ensuring those referred for cancer treatments are treated within 62 days.
Pressed over when NHS waiting lists would fall back below pre-pandemic levels, Mr Streeting said he would “certainly like to see them come down faster”.
“We’ve committed to return the NHS by the end of this parliament to the constitutional standards we expect,” he told Sky News. It would mean waiting lists falling by millions before the latest date for a general election to be held in 2029.
Asked how that could be achieved, Mr Streeting said: “To get to constitutional standards, NHS waiting lists will need to be millions lower by the end of this parliament.”
There are currently 7.6 million people on NHS waiting lists, compared with 4.6 million before the pandemic in February 2020.
Mr Streeting highlighted his decision to agree a deal with the British Medical Association to end the junior doctors’ strikes as “an essential ingredient of bringing waiting lists down”.
He hinted at ramping up the use of spare capacity in the private sector to conduct treatments such as hip and knee replacements, describing it as “a means to an end”.
“The end is to not just get the NHS back on its feet, but make sure it’s fit for the future so that we’re not reliant on the independent sector in the longer term,” Mr Streeting said.
Mr Streeting’s promise comes ahead of the publication of a damning report into the NHS which is set to show the health service on its knees after 14 years of Conservative government.
He commissioned former health minister Ara Darzi to conduct a “warts and all” probe into the problems in the NHS which will be published on Thursday.
Sir Keir Starmer told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg that it will show the Tories left the NHS in an “unforgivable” state.
He added: “The money that was taken out of the NHS, particularly in the early years of the coalition from 2010 onwards, the Lansley reforms, which were hopelessly misconceived, and then of course Covid on top of all that, which has put us in this awful position for the NHS.”
Lord Darzi’s report is expected to lay bare the scale of the crisis facing children’s care in the NHS, finding that “too many are being let down”.
It will highlight 100,000 infants who were left waiting more than six hours in A&E departments last year, as well as a 60 per cent rise in waiting times for infants since 2010, with around 800,000 children and young people on NHS waiting lists. Of those, 175,000 are waiting between six and 12 months while 35,000 have been waiting more than a year.
Lord Darzi, who was made a minister in DHSC in 2007 as part of Gordon Brown’s attempt to form a “government of all the talents”, is also expected to highlight falling vaccination rates among children, growing ADHD prescriptions, and soaring numbers of hospital admissions for children and young people with eating disorders.
And, the report will show that children from the most deprived backgrounds are twice as likely to be obese by reception age.
Shadow health secretary Victoria Atkins accused Labour of using Lord Darzi’s health review as “cover” to raise taxes in the upcoming Budget.
Speaking to Sky News, Ms Atkins said: “I was clear as secretary of state that to build an NHS for the next 75 years, we have to marry reform with investment, and I tried to do that through the productivity plans, bringing tech to the frontline of NHS services, which I hear that Labour is cancelling.
“What worries me is what we’ve seen so far from the health secretary, the only thing he’s done is to give junior doctors a pay rise with no productivity reform.”
Put to her by presenter Trevor Phillips that the previous Conservative government broke the NHS, Ms Atkins said she welcomed discussion about future-proofing the NHS but insisted Labour were “choosing the headlines they pick” from Lord Darzi’s review and had ignored the health situation in Wales, which is “far, far worse”.
She added: “This report, I fear, is cover for the Labour Party to raise our taxes in the Budget in October, and they are laying the groundwork for this.
“They weren’t straight with us about winter fuel payments, they’re not being straight with us about taxes, and we need to have a grown-up conversation about the NHS, but this is not the way to go about it.”
