Last week, the eminent cancer surgeon Lord Darzi published the findings of the independent investigation that our Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, commissioned just after the General Election.

It is an expert, independent and comprehensive report into the state of our NHS, and its findings are raw, honest and breathtaking.

The NHS has not been able to meet its promises to treat patients on time for almost a decade; patients have never been more dissatisfied with the service they receive; and cancer is more likely to be a death sentence for NHS patients than for patients in our European neighbours. Both children and adults are less healthy today than a decade ago.

It is clear that the NHS is critical condition. We need to perform major surgery, or it will die.

There are four major causes of the decline we have seen. The first is decade of under-investment, leaving the NHS 15 years behind the private sector on technology, with fewer diagnostic scanners per patient than almost every comparable country, including Belgium, Italy and Greece.

The second is the disastrous 2012 top-down reorganisation of the NHS, the effects of which are still being felt.

The third is the pandemic, which hit the NHS harder than any other comparable healthcare system, leaving waiting lists to balloon to 7.6 million.

The fourth is failure to reform. From 2019 onwards, the previous Government oversaw a 17% increase in the number of staff working in hospitals. But this did not lead to better outcomes for patients. At great expense to the taxpayer, the NHS has instead seen a huge fall in productivity. Money has been spent in the wrong places – or in Lord Darzi’s words, “British Airways wouldn’t train more pilots without buying more planes.”

Lord Darzi has given his diagnosis, and it is serious. But last week, Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced the prescription – a decade of reform for our NHS and social care services.

We will be publishing a ten-year plan early next year, which will set out how we will fundamentally reform the NHS and deliver three big shifts:

1) Hospital to community, building a Neighbourhood Health Service around patients, where they are, to help us catch illness early.

2) Analogue to digital, giving patients real choice and control through the NHS App, and realising the enormous potential of the NHS to partner with tech and life sciences and put NHS patients at the front of the queue for new treatments and medicines.

3) Sickness to prevention, because prevention is better than cure.

We know that the NHS is broken. Too many in our community are struggling to access the care they need due to appalling A&E wait times, hospital waiting lists, and the 8am scramble for GP appointments.

But we also know that the vital signs of the NHS are strong – hardworking staff with compassion, care, and an extraordinary depth of clinical talent. Labour is the party that created the NHS, and we’re up to the challenge of reform. We’ve turned the NHS around before, and we’ll do it again.

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