UK’s Labour government puts health at the top of its agenda

The new Labour government takes office with an ambitious new approach to health, but there are questions over how these plans will be funded.

Labour’s health spokesman Wes Streeting, today Tuesday 9 July, started talks to end the pay dispute with doctors. He is unlikely to meet doctors’ demands for “full restoration” of pay levels – which they say requires a 35% increase phased in over a number of years, but he is still optimistic that the dispute can be resolved.

In a statement following his appointment as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Streeting said: “This government has received a mandate from millions of voters for change and reform of the NHS.”

Labour has set health as one of its five key “missions” in government. The mission approach focuses on the end result, rather than narrow targets set by previous Labour governments. Streeting doesn’t underestimate the challenge that lies ahead: “It will take time – we never pretended that the NHS could be fixed overnight.”

The 2023 British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey shows that one in four people surveyed expressed dissatisfaction with the NHS. Satisfaction with social care is even lower at an abysmal 13%.

The main reasons for discontent are found in the long waiting lists for doctor and hospital appointments, staff shortages, and underfunding. Labour’s commitment to addressing these problems, and years of decline under the Conservatives, is one reason that the party enjoyed a landslide victory in last week’s general election. 

Labour’s manifesto committed to providing 40,000 more appointments every week, doubling the number of cancer scanners, and a return to the ‘family doctor’.

Other proposals, like the recruitment of 8,500 mental health experts, and a further £125 million for a new Dentistry Rescue Plan, aim at turning the tide and delivering better services.

A recent report by the King’s Fund, a UK-based health think tank, found that the manifesto was light on the details of how to achieve these commitments. The 40,000 extra appointments will mean significant increases in extra evening and night shifts, adding to the workload of staff that are already stretched to their limits and suffering from burnout. 

The party’s aim to clear the waiting list backlog within five years “will take real effort and absolute focus, and may mean that other big, transformational reforms will be slower to realise,” said Sarah Woolnough, chief executive of The King’s Fund.  

If the manifesto provides a diagnosis of the country’s health challenges, how this reform will be funded is not clear.

Paul Johnson from the UK’s Institute for Fiscal Studies, said that hard choices lie ahead with high debt, high taxes and struggling public services, no party reflected this in their plans: “You can’t pledge to end all waits of more than 18 weeks, allocate no money to that pledge and then claim to have a fully costed manifesto.”

[Edited by Rajnish Singh]

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