Streeting hits out at ‘middle-class Lefties’ opposed to Labour NHS plans

Wes Streeting has criticised “middle-class Lefties” who are opposed to Labour’s plans for NHS reform.

The shadow health secretary said his party would make use of the private healthcare sector in order to reduce NHS waiting lists in a move which he conceded would prompt cries of “betrayal” from some quarters.

Mr Streeting has previously warned the health service will go bankrupt without reform and that it would be wasteful to keep pouring money into a system that is not working.

In an article for The Sun, he said: “We will also use spare capacity in the private sector to cut the waiting lists.

“Middle-class lefties cry ‘betrayal’. The real betrayal is the two-tier system that sees people like them treated faster – while working ­families like mine are left waiting for longer.”

Mr Streeting argued that the NHS must be “a service, not a shrine” and promised it would not receive any additional funding without “major surgery” to the way it works under Labour.

“It’s a 20th century service that hasn’t changed with the times and isn’t fit for the modern era,” he added.

“It catches illness too late, which means worse care for patients at greater cost to the taxpayer… This can’t go on. If the NHS doesn’t change, it will die.”

He said the first major suite of Labour’s reforms to the health service would focus on using artificial intelligence (AI) technology in every hospital, while expanding the NHS app in an attempt to give greater choice to patients.

Mr Streeting also vowed to reduce bureaucracy, noting GPs are currently measured by 55 targets and that too much time is taken up filling in forms and “ticking boxes”.

Warning reform would “not be easy” but insisting he was “up for the fight”, he concluded: “The NHS saved my life when I had kidney cancer and now I’m determined to save our NHS.”

The MP for Ilford North took time off work in 2021 after his diagnosis aged 38, which he told The Telegraph last year had forced him to take his personal health more seriously.

He has accused Rishi Sunak of making cancer patients “pay the price” by failing to resolve recent junior doctors’ strikes, while also blaming the Prime Minister for record NHS waiting lists and extended ambulance waiting times.

During his broadcast round on Monday, Mr Streeting criticised Left-wingers in his own party for their “howls of outrage” in response to his ambitions to make greater use of the private sector.

He told the BBC: “As the howls of outrage pour in, as they already are on my social media mentions this morning, I kind of take it as water off a duck’s back.

“Because I don’t think I could look someone in the eye who is waiting for months and months, sometimes over a year, in pain and agony for treatment, I couldn’t look that person in the eye and tell them that they should wait longer because my principles trump their timely access to care.”

And he refused to commit to the inclusion of a detailed funding plan for social care in the Labour general election manifesto this year.

Asked repeatedly if the official opposition would set out how it will fund its ambitions, he replied: “You are tempting me into announcing Labour’s manifesto on the Today programme this morning. I am going to resist that temptation.

“We have got to set out a different kind of politics around social care for the long term… I would hope that the next Labour government won’t just provide an immediate answer to the immediate crisis in social care but will set out a long-term direction for investment and reform that can command consensus across the divide and can last for generations, as we did on the NHS in 1948.”