Wes Streeting plans to slash NHS waiting lists by an extra 233,000 a year by beefing up partnerships with private hospitals when Labour comes to power.
The bold pledge by the no-nonsense shadow Health Secretary came as he gave the NHS seven years to “reform or die” predicting it would not survive if the Tories win another term in office.
In a bid to save it Mr Streeting, 39, would hoover up spare capacity in the country’s 500 private hospitals. That would enable NHS patients to get ops done faster for free and reduce the record waiting list now topping seven million patients.
In an exclusive interview with the Sunday Mirror Mr Streeting said: “People just want to be seen as quickly as possible.
“What we have now is a two tier health system in which people who can afford to go privately do.
“It’s unconscionable to leave working class people behind because they cannot afford to pay and I’m determined to end that inequality.”
Mr Streeting’s ultimate plan is to make the NHS so good no one would need to pay for private treatment. But as the health crisis deepens he needs swift remedies.
Expanding on the present scheme means NHS hospitals would pay what it costs them to perform the procedures - £11,500 for a new hip, £6,300 for a knee, £2,500 for a hernia repair and £2,000 for a cataract op.
Mr Streeting added: “Independent providers want to help and there’s something in it for them because they will get extra income.”
Mr Sreeting bumped into a constituent on the train last week who apologised for taking her daughter to a private doctor after the NHS failed to diagnose what was wrong with her. “That broke my heart,” he said. “That family is not flush with cash.”
He calculates that the private sector could deal with an extra 39,400 inpatients a year of which 25,000 would get ops, and another 193,400 be seen as outpatients. But his aim is to help the NHS cope not to threaten it.
He is adamant that it is the system that needs changing not the principles behind the NHS and it will remain free at the point of use for everyone under his stewardship.
But he shrugged off the backlash he caused for insisting the NHS is a “service not a shrine” and not the “envy of the world” as some politicians like to claim.
He added: “Sometimes the Labour Party has been too sentimental about the NHS. The left worry that by criticising performance you are criticising NHS principles. When I criticise NHS performance it is in defence of those principles. I know the NHS is failing and I’ve got a serious plan to fix it.”
Before the pandemic 1.2million NHS patients were referred to private hospitals but figures for January to September this year show they could take 233,000 more.
And the sector blames that failure on NHS hostility to private care and Tory ministers fearful they will be accused of privatising the health service.
David Hare of the Independent Healthcare Providers Network said: “The private sector struggles to engage with its NHS counterparts.
“A pound spent outside the NHS isn’t a pound lost to the NHS. It’s a pound spent on treating NHS patients.”
And Mr Streeting is not scared of taking on vested interests. He clashed with the British Medical Association doctors union by telling them if they want more money for medics, services must improve.
Nor does he back the Royal College of Nursing demand that a 19% pay increase is deliverable - even though nurses are 20% worse off in real terms since the Tories came to power,
Mr Streeting said: “Their strike is a cry for help for an NHS not just on its knees but flat on its face after 12 years of Conservative mismanagement.
“What the nurses are asking for is reasonable but it is not realistic against the backdrop of the Conservatives crashing the economy and wrecking public finances. And in asking for talks the nurses appreciate that.
“But if I was in government now I would sit down with the nurses for pay talks. I won’t put a figure on that because I won’t make a promise unless I know I can keep it.
“And we have no idea what the economy will look like in the next two years.”
If Labour wins the General Election in 2024 Mr Streeting will unveil a 10 year plan for the NHS within his first 100 days in power and is now studying other health services around the world to see if lessons can be learned to improve it.
But he is set on a plan to also get waiting lists down by putting 7,500 more students through medical school with the aim of creating 45,000 extra doctors by 2040.
That would stop millions of patients a month being unable to book an appointment with their GP and two million waiting a month to see their family doctor when they do, as the Labour Party has recently claimed, although fact checkers have disputed the reliability of the estimates.
The scheme will be paid for by clawing back £1.6billion from wealthy non-doms who do not pay British tax on overseas earnings - such as the PM’s wife Akshata Murty.
Two days after her non-dom status was revealed she agreed to pay an estimated £2.1million extra tax to the Treasury. And she is an example, says Mr Streeting, of why non-doms won’t leave Britain.
Research by the London School of Economics and Warwick University shows that fewer than 100 non-doms - less than 0.3% - would go if they had to pay more.
Mr Streeting added: “No10 is a perfect case study. No-one who ended their non-dom status there has fled the country. We need nurses not non-doms.”
Mr Streeting’s zeal for change in the NHS is informed by his own experiences of having a cancerous kidney removed in May last year.
He said: “It was great I didn’t have to worry about a bill and the treatment was Rolls Royce. I had an outstanding surgeon and brilliant clinical nurse specialist. I could not fault them for a second.
“Cancer care has worsened every single year under the Conservatives. I was anxious about going through treatment during Covid yet my experience was probably better than it would be today.”
But after recent follow-up tests he could not get his hands on the results. His own surgeon intervened, and only last week it was confirmed he is cancer free.
“When they told me my scan hadn’t been processed they were so apologetic. Whatever my frustrations with the NHS I’m not angry with the staff. They’ve got the most difficult challenges in the country right now.
“I’m where most patients are. I love the NHS and everyone who works in it. But I’m deeply frustrated with my experience because the system is now struggling to cope. And that’s what drives me on and makes me want to be Health Secretary.”
And prime minister after that perhaps? It is a question Wes Streeting is adept at sidestepping after being tipped so many times for the top job.
His ambitions stretch no further than running the Health Department under a Keir Starmer premiership.
But he added: “If I had a pound for every time Keir has warned the Shadow Cabinet not to be complacent about that I’d be able to join Rishi Sunak on the Sunday Times rich list.”
This story was updated post-publication to include fact checkers' concerns that the headline figure of five million patients being unable to book a GP appointment may be an overestimate.
