The newly elected UK government’s Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Wes Streeting has a full plate of challenges ahead. Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) is plagued with a chronic lack of funding, staffing crunches and backlogs, while the country’s life sciences sector is seemingly in decline. Streeting has prioritised an urgent review of the NHS and potentially swingeing reforms to ensure that the system – free at the point of care to all users – remains in place for current and future generations.
A Tough Job Ahead
“It’s clear to anyone who works in or uses the NHS that it is broken”
Wes Streeting takes on his role as Britain’s new Secretary of State for Health and Social Care this month after the recent landslide election victory that brought the Labour Party into power after 14 years in opposition. The long-term Labour politician who was first elected to Parliament in 2015 is known for his humble roots, and, as a survivor of kidney cancer, for being personally familiar with the patient’s perspective on healthcare.
The new secretary has his work cut out for him, particularly with respect to the NHS, a system Streeting claimed was facing the worst crisis in its history. “It’s clear to anyone who works in or uses the NHS that it is broken,” he recognized. Despite the dire state of the nation’s health service, with funding predicted to fall short by GBP 38 billion by the end of the parliament; an unhappy and insufficient workforce, and almost ten million people on waiting lists for operations and procedures, he claimed there is an “enormous opportunity” to get the system “back on its feet, making it fit for the future.”
Insufficient Work Force
One of the major pain points for the NHS is staffing with longstanding issues like huge staff shortages, low retention rates, and the widespread strike actions from overworked and underpaid doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals that have gripped the system since 2022.
Illustrating the issues before the election, were the Royal College of General Practitioners’ (RCGP) comments that over three-quarters of the country’s GPs believed their excessive workload was compromising patient safety and the Royal College of Nursing’s (RCN) similar claim about nurses.
One of the most urgent staffing problems Streeting must resolve is an ongoing dispute with junior doctors that led these doctors in training to go on strike for five days from 27 June – the 11th such action in 20 months – resulting in the postponement of some 61,000 appointments, procedures and operations. Demanding a pay rise of 35 percent, junior doctors in England claimed their pay has been docked by more than a quarter over the past 15 years.
While Streeting said previously that he would not meet the 35 percent demand, he has agreed to begin negotiations with the British Medical Association’s (BMA) junior doctors committee, asserting that there was “space for a discussion” on salaries, as well as on how to improve junior doctors’ working conditions.
Backlogs and Long Waits
With more than 5 million patients a month in England waiting more than two weeks for a GP appointment, the Labour Party’s pre-election manifesto pledged it would increase GP numbers and boost appointments to 40,000 more per week. After one of his first official visits, Streeting appeared to back up this promise, claiming that the government would divert billions of pounds from hospitals to GPs to “fix the front door to the NHS.”
As less than 10 percent of the GBP 165 billion NHS budget in England is spent on primary care, Streeting said he would raise the budget for primary care and thus improve access to family doctors and relieve the mounting pressure on hospitals. “I’m determined to make the NHS more of a neighbourhood health service, with more care available closer to people’s homes. Because if patients can’t get a GP appointment, then they end up in A&E, which is worse for them, and more expensive for the taxpayer,” said Streeting.
10-Year Plan
Apart from putting out the current fires that rage through the NHS, Streeting will have to dive deeper into the issues to get at the roots of the health service’s long-standing problems. To do this, he has ordered an independent investigation into the state of the NHS to be delivered in September. Led by surgeon, independent peer and former Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health Professor Lord Darzi, the study will uncover findings that are set to be the basis of a 10-year plan to radically reform the NHS.
“I want a raw and frank assessment of the state of the NHS,” Streeting affirmed. “This is the necessary first step on the road to recovery for our National Health Service, so it can be there for us when we need it, once again.” However, for Brits concerned that they may have to start paying for health services at the point of care, Streeting unequivocally ruled out such a scenario. ‘”Over my dead body,” he told radio station LBC when quizzed on whether he planned to introduce co-pays and top-up charges – as patients in some other European countries experience – for NHS patients.
Boosting Economic Growth
“We will make Britain a powerhouse for life sciences and medical technology”
In addition to addressing the issues plaguing the NHS, Streeting has also pledged that he will boost the country’s lagging life sciences sector. “We will make Britain a powerhouse for life sciences and medical technology. If we can combine the care of the NHS and the genius of our country’s leading scientific minds, we can develop modern treatments for patients and help get Britain’s economy booming,” he said at a recent event.
As of yet, it remains unclear how the new government will reach this goal, yet the desire to take the industry into account has been seen as a positive sign by Britain’s foremost pharma industry group, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI). “A strong industry-government partnership will be vital to ensure that we continue to discover breakthrough medical innovation in the UK and ensure NHS patients are among the first people in the world to benefit from the latest medicines and vaccines,” commented Richard Torbett, the ABPI’s Chief Executive.
“The new government now needs to hit the ground running and rapidly set out a clear, detailed plan for what the government will do in the coming weeks and years to address persistent inequalities in access to medicines and vaccines as well as unlock our sector’s true growth potential.”
Photo credit: UK Parliament
