Health Secretary Wes Streeting has urged doctors’ union leaders to work with the government on its plans to transform the NHS and to “stop rattling off” industrial action over pay.
Streeting said Thursday’s damning report by peer Ara Darzi made it clear that “the status quo of managed decline is not an option, nor is simply pouring ever-increasing taxpayer dollars into a broken model”.
He told the British Medical Association’s (BMA) GP committee that backing joint action because of budget cuts would harm patients.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Streeting said the threat of joint action “would harm patients and put more burdens on their colleagues in other parts of the NHS”. He added: “I think GPs want to work with this government. They can see the seriousness of our intent … they want, like us, to restore the GP relationship. I urge the BMA to work with us on that and stop the south west attacks.”
Earlier John Bell, professor of medicine at Oxford University, said the BMA had “been a major drag on healthcare reform”. He said: “If you’re thinking about an egg to break, I’m afraid it has to sort out the stranglehold that the medical profession has, by and large, on the way we run the health system.” .
“I think the medical profession is locked into lifestyle and medicine, but they are very conservative and it is very difficult to move them to another place.
Asked about the comments, Streeting said: “I don’t see resistance in the NHS. People are crying out for change and I have good conversations with the BMA about reform. And I think there is a real possibility, after settling the dispute between junior doctors, to restore that sense of professional cooperation.”
But he added: “Despite the fact that we put £100m into GP unemployment in the first six weeks of this government and our commitment to increasing GP health care as a proportion of the NHS budget, we still see sandblasting – an unnecessary threat to collective action .”
Streeting said “the NHS will go bust if we fail to flatten the curve of cost and demand in the long term”. But he ruled out sugar and salt taxes to pay for upgrades. Speaking to LBC, he said: “It was not in our manifesto. And the reason we’re reluctant to go down that road is because there’s a cost-of-living crisis at the moment. Crucially, on public health and preventive measures. We have to take people with us.”
Asked about the timetable for turning the NHS around, Streeting told BBC Breakfast: “I’m going hell for leather to bring the NHS back to what are called the constitutional benchmarks, the targets it sets itself, in the five-year period that we committed to and to ensure that by the end of this session we see waiting lists millions lower than they are today.”
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Speaking to Times Radio, he said: “I think people know that it has taken more than a decade to break the NHS down and it will take time to get the NHS back on its feet and make sure it is fit for the future. Because we don’t invest in the capital and the technology, the day-to-day spending gets out of control and then the capital and technology budgets go to plug the gaps in the day-to-day spending and so the cycle repeats itself.
“In the spending review, the Chancellor and I are determined to break that cycle by really focusing on the capital investment and technology investment that will help us reduce the cost of day-to-day spending and improve business productivity.” system.”
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