Read: A blueprint for the NHS: Labour’s NHS Mission set out plans for change
Labour Leader Sir Keir Starmer kicked off 2023 by announcing his five ‘Missions’ for the country, focused around growth, energy, the NHS, police and opportunity, and since the start of the year, the party has gradually been unveiling the context behind each mission, putting meat on the bones and setting out what a Labour government would do should it win the next election.
This week, Starmer and Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting unveiled their ‘NHS mission’. It’s a key battleground that undoubtedly commands the public’s attention, but its success is also vital to the social and economic recovery of the country.
Setting out its plans for the NHS this week, Starmer gave details of how they were based on an understanding of the challenges and the opportunities of the NHS, with a close scrutiny of what needs to change. The plan talks about innovation, making technology work and, crucially, unlocking purpose in its people.
The plans also consider how wider public policy issues can and should be seen through a health lens, and ensure health policies should be embedded in all public policies across government departments, whether that relates to decent homes, breakfast clubs or advertising on social media.
Labour’s health mission sets out what the party calls ‘clear, measurable and long-term goals’:
an NHS that is there when people need it
fewer lives lost to the biggest killers
a fairer Britain where everyone lives well for longer
The plan includes commitments to reduce ambulance waiting times to seven minutes for a cardiac arrest, a return to four-hour targets for A & E waits, an aim to have the highest satisfaction levels on records for GPs, and to reduce waiting lists with planned treatment to take place within 18 weeks. The party also says it will improve healthy life expectancy for all, and will halve the increasing inequality gap between different regions of England. It sets out proposals to reduce heart attacks and strokes by a quarter within a decade, to ensure that 75% of all cancer is diagnosed at stage one or two and to reduce the suicide rate, currently the biggest killer of young lives in the country.
Labour’s blueprint conceded that there need to be fundamental shifts in approach if it is going to be able to achieve these changes. It proposed there should be a move away from hospitals so that care is closer to the community - a difficult balance to strike - with the NHS becoming a ‘Neighbourhood Health Service’. The party proposes making GPs more accessible, training more of them, making the future of general practice more sustainable and having better integration of health and social care.
The party also aims to revolutionise mental health treatment with 8,500 new mental health professionals, specialist access in every school and guaranteed treatment inside four weeks.
Labour has also pledged the ‘biggest ever expansion of NHS staff and the delivery of a long-term workforce plan’ to create 7,500 more medical school places, 10,000 more nursing and midwifery clinical placements per year, 700 more district nurses each year, 5,000 more health visitors and recruit thousands more mental health staff. Recruitment is one of the biggest challenges facing the NHS, and the Labour Party will need to set out a detailed roadmap about how it undertakes a recruitment drive in order to deliver the staff the NHS needs. The party has promised - should it win power - independent workforce assessments so staffing can keep up with the demands of a growing and ageing population, including retention issues with reviews of training quality, entrance routes, and professional development. Labour will need to set out how this will work in practice well ahead of the next election.
Recruitment and retention is an issue that the Purpose Health Coalition have been focusing on in collaboration with partners in NHS Trusts and healthcare organisations. Launched this month by Shadow Health Secretary, Wes Streeting MP, and former Social Care Minister, Dame Caroline Dinenage, the ‘Your local NHS: be at the heart of it’ campaign brings together leaders from a wide coalition to promote the opportunities that working for NHS Trusts can offer, as a place to work and a place to learn. It will also highlight the role of the private sector in supporting patients, reducing waiting lists and boosting capacity to tackle health inequalities.
In launching their NHS Mission, the Labour Party has set out a blueprint to reform the NHS around the biggest issues of the day, particularly getting more staff into the workforce. There is still huge amounts of detail needed on aspects of the reforms and about funding, but a purpose-led approach to a viable and sustainable healthcare system, with its workforce at the heart of the strategy, is a positive step.