Tag: Wes Streeting

The speech made by Wes Streeting, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, in Manchester on 12 November 2025.

Thanks so much for that introduction, and thanks to all of you for being here.  

I’m delighted to be here given the, or to give, the announcement that everyone’s been talking about in the news today. That is the government’s reforms to NHS system architecture.  

And I’m really grateful, Daniel, for the leadership for you and NHS Providers is showing at such a challenging time, but before I get into the challenges, let me just start with the positives. Because right now, we’re achieving things in the NHS. We’ve not seen for a long, long time and I know it’s not been easy. I’ve made considerable demands on you. And will continue to do so. But you’ve shown over the last year, or so, that while the NHS was broken, it wasn’t beaten. 

You provided 5 million more elective appointments, 135,000 more cancer, diagnoses within the 28-day target, and cut waiting lists by over 200,000. Ambulance response times and 12-hour waits in A&E are down. There are two and a half thousand more GPs. In fact, we now have the highest number of GPs on record. 

You’ve opened over a hundred Community Diagnostic Centres at evenings and weekends. New surgical hubs to bust the backlog. The extra doctors, nurses and mental health staff we need to treat patients on time and together, we built the 10-year plan for health to create the truly modern health service that we’re all crying out for. 

These are the green shoots of recovery that are beginning to renew confidence and restore faith in our National Health Service for both patients and for our staff, our investment and modernisation are paying off. And with it, ambition and optimism are returning. It’s why I can come here today and say, with credibility, that we can still cut waiting times to 18 weeks, by the end of this Parliament. 

Something few thought possible when we made the commitment in opposition. And while we can do it, and we can do it while delivering year-on-year improvements to Urgent and Emergency Care, we can get back to seeing people within four hours and while rebuilding general practice, so that patients can get an appointment with their doctor when they need one. 

So, I want to begin by saying to all of you genuinely. Thank you. There’s sometimes a perception out there that I’m going to have to really battle this system and all of you to modernise and it’s such a misrepresentation of the leaders I work with. NHS leaders and frontline staff are not only chomping at the bit for change. You’re the ones showing the world that it can be delivered.

There’s a real can-do culture back in the NHS, but and it’s a big but – there is also a great deal of jeopardy, out there from economic constraints, winter pressures, industrial action. And the political forces willing us all to fail. 

So there’s a lot of pressure on our shoulders, because we all know how important the NHS is to our country. How central it is to the lives of every family in this land. And how strongly we believe in the values that have underpinned it since 1948, values that are becoming increasingly contested. 

So, it’s important, I think for us to keep in mind, the consequences, if we get this wrong. Millions are counting on us and there’s much much more to do, so this isn’t the moment to ease off the gas. This is the moment to push our foot harder on the accelerator. 

One reason why we see renewed confidence is the rigid focus you’ve brought to reducing waste and increasing productivity while improving services at the same time. In fact, reducing waste and increasing productivity are essential to improving patient services and staff experience.  

This government is investing an extra £26 billion in the NHS this year. 

We continue to be relative winners of Budgets and Spending Reviews. Although you and I know what the word relative means which is why I’m always relatively happy at how we do at Budget time. And we owe it to patients, to staff and to taxpayers to make sure that every penny that’s going into this service is money well spent. 

That’s why I’m really proud that for the first time in years, the NHS is in balance, seven months into the financial year. It’s not going to be easy to stay on track for the rest of this year, especially with the double whammy of strikes and winter to come. 

But breaking even is a huge shift from the £6.6 billion deficit we were looking at.

There are people out there saying that universal health care, free at the point of need is no longer affordable or possible. And everyone in this room and beyond is proving them wrong.  

So, this isn’t just a technocratic accounting triumph. It is the foundation of everything else because it’s ultimately what will allow us to invest again in staff technology and services, all of which add up to better patient experience. It also gives me, but all of us, credibility with the Chancellor. The government inherited public finances with a £22 billion black hole. 

And it won’t have escape your notice that the public finances and the wider economy are still under serious strain. So, there is no money to waste and I think that it’s really important that we accept with some humility that one of the reasons the Chancellor is having to make some unpopular choices is to protect investment in the NHS. 

This government will always put our public services and our NHS first. But the investment this government is making in the NHS also comes with a moral duty for us as NHS leaders, because every penny that goes into treating the sickness in our society is a penny that could have been spent on tackling the wider social determinants of health, much of which sits outside the NHS. 

On prevention rather than cure. Of course when I say savings, it sounds very benign. In reality, I do want to take this opportunity to acknowledge that this has been particularly hard for ICBs.  

I’ve asked a lot of you this year, last year, I said that ICBs will have a more focused purpose, as strategic Commissioners. They’re the drivers of the transformation from a National Health Service to a Neighbourhood Health Service and a preventative health service. 

Given that focus brief, we’re asking ICBs to downsize significantly.  

Having seen redundancies in organisations I’ve worked in previously, I want you to know. I do not take this lightly. I know this will have been weighing heavily on all of you and the people who work for you and I certainly don’t want ICB leaders to take the flag for decisions and timetables on head count that are ultimately my responsibility. 

I’m very alive to the uncertainty that’s hung over staff for far too long. And I don’t mind saying, it’s made me uncomfortable, as it should. Because I know we’re not just talking about jobs, we’re talking about people’s livelihoods. And again that is my responsibility. Not yours. I want to be honest with you and through you to your staff that I have not resolved this quickly enough. 

But this is worth doing and we can now bring certainty to people. From today I’m giving ICBs the go ahead and the funding for the voluntary redundancy programs that staff have been waiting for. This will see overall head count cut by 50 percent which will particularly, not exclusively, but particularly, affect roles in corporate services, communications and administration. 

Alongside this, we’re moving ahead with the abolition of NHS England and we’ll complete it to the timetable the Prime Minister announced in March. Head count across my Department and NHS England will also be halved, returning to the size we had in 2010, when the NHS delivered the shortest waiting times and highest patient satisfaction in history. This move will free up more than a billion pounds a year, which will be reinvested in frontline care. 

To, anyone listening at home. And who knows? Someone might be listening at home. I want to reassure you that our investment is not simply pouring more water into a leaky bucket. We’re plugging the holes cutting out the waste, and rebuilding our National Health Service. And to those of you here today, and hopefully you’re listening. 

We aren’t simply changing staff numbers. We are ending the constant assurance, ad hoc demands and micromanagement that you’ve been subjected to. The centre will instead enable you to focus on improving services for patients. A new department that empowers rather than suffocates NHS leaders and frontline staff. And I have to say, the way in which leaders across the service are responding to the scale of the challenge I’ve placed on you has been extremely and genuinely impressive.  

We’ve seen an uptick in flu jabs, among staff and the public, we’ve stress tested plans much earlier, we’re investing in new ambulances, building new urgent treatment centres and introducing new mental health crisis centres. 

Online access to GP practices should stem the tide of the 4 million patients who go to A&E each year because they can’t get through to their local surgery. So thank you to all of those GPs who have successfully introduced this new system. You’ll be crucial in unclogging emergency departments, freeing up beds and saving lives this winter.  

And on the social care side, we’re working more closely with local authorities to ensure people get the care and support they need at home rather than languishing in hospital beds. But we know that the NHS is already running hot. A&E and ambulance demand is already higher than it was in 2024. 

Flu is coming earlier and there is a particularly nasty strain this season. Those are the challenges we have to rise to for many patients, who come through our doors. This winter, it will be the one time in the entire year when they experience the NHS. What impression do we want them to leave with? 

Do you want to be just about managing? That can’t be our benchmark. We can’t accept the winter crisis as an annual event like the John Lewis Christmas ad. We have to improve year on year. And of course, with all these challenges, the last thing patients need this winter is strike action by the BMA. 

I was really proud of the way that NHS leaders and frontline staff pulled together to get through the last round of resident doctor strikes.  

We saw an additional 11,000 procedures going ahead compared with the June 2024 war count. We managed to keep the costs of industrial action, down to the tune of a hundred million pounds less than the previous round. 

And despite the busiest July on record for A&E, this was the highest proportion of patients seen within four hours in four years. I think that is a considerable achievement. And I want all of you to know that it wasn’t lost on me how hard you all worked to keep the show on the road. 

But the truth is that strikes do have unavoidable and serious consequences, particularly when they’re called during winter. That is why I made a comprehensive offer to the BMA last week in a final attempt to prevent strike action. Coming on top of a 28.9 percent pay rise which they have already received from this government. 

I would have thought that the offer to go even further with extra jobs prioritisation and money back in their pockets would have demonstrated how serious this government is about improving resident doctors lives and career prospects. Yet the BMA rejected the offer out of hand, refusing to even put it to their members. 

If strikes do go ahead, this will cost around £240 million and we will not be able to afford the same offer again, so my message to BMA is simple: postpone the strikes, trust your members and give resident doctors a say. Patients, doctors and the wider NHS staff all lose if strikes go ahead. And there is still time for everyone to win.

That brings me to a broader point about choices and trade-offs. When we pull together, and when we mobilise behind the ideas in the 10 Year Health Plan, we can deliver year-on-year improvement, change and transformation that gets the NHS back on its feet and fit for the future. Where parts of our team fail to recognise that we can’t solve everything, for everyone, everywhere, all at once, that’s when we run into difficulties.  

That’s what makes our collective job, much harder. And I know I’m preaching to the choir in this room because as leaders, there are choices and trade-offs that you face every day and it’s really important that we continue to work together to face those choices and trade-offs in an honest way. 

Because the progress of the last 18 months, tells a bigger story, one of a service beginning to believe in itself again. That’s quite something. Given the horrendous state of neglect the NHS was in after 14 years of under investment and mismanagement. And we have to be honest that some of what we’re doing has never been tried before. Success won’t happen overnight.  

We, I, will make some mistakes along the way. That is all part of learning and improving. But together we’ve begun restoring confidence, we’ve built strong foundations for real improvements. We’ve moved from barely scraping by to having real hope and big ambitions. 

I said there’d be fewer targets and less bureaucracy and there are. I said there’d be no more short-termism and we now have multi-year funding settlements to give you the certainty you need. I said the centre would be smaller and it will be. I said the power would be handed back to patients professionals and providers and it is being. All of this is why we’re here today in a position to declare that the NHS is on the road to recovery. 

And at the heart of that revival is our 10-year plan for health. It sets out how we’ll transform the service of today into an NHS fit for the future. Our three big shifts will create a new model of care that not only catches up with the rest of the pack, but leads the world. 

The plan breaks with the fiction that you can run a health service, one and a half million staff who deliver 600 million patient interactions every single day, from an office building in Whitehall. The new care model is backed by a new operating model, anchored in clear and consistent principles, power and resources should flow to local providers, frontline staff, and ultimately be placed in the hands of patients.  

Autonomy should be earned by meeting public expectations delivering, high quality care with excellent financial oversight through world-class leadership. Good performance should be incentivised and rewarded. Poor performance should be held rigorously to account. And transparency and choice are essential, not nice to have. That’s what lay behind our decision to publish new NHS League tables. 

I know there was a concern when I announced them last year that this would be about naming and shaming and good, old-fashioned, manager bashing. I hope you can see now that this is actually about confronting the challenges we all face with grown-up honesty.  

I was delighted for example, with the way the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Kings Lynn, a hospital which is literally being propped up on stilts, responded to being bottom of the table.  

Let me just share with you what the executive managing director, Chris Bown said. He said, and I quote, the issues about our waiting times in our emergency department being too long, our waiting times for cancer care, and elective care being too long, and our financial situation, are not attributed directly to the state of the building. There are things we must do within this building to improve the experience of patients and staff.  

Now, the reason I highlight that as an example is, he could easily have said it’s all because my hospital’s falling down. 

And I know he could have said that because I recall offering that defence myself on BBC local radio, in his part of the world earlier that day. And in contrast to what I said, what Chris did was offer the warts and all honesty that is the first step on the road to recovery, not making excuses and covering backsides, but actually taking responsibility and showing a determination to improve. 

Even when factors are stacked against you, that is how we turn the NHS around. But even as we let go of the top-down approach of the past, we’re not abandoning trusts to their fate. Those at the bottom of the tables will receive more support. At the other end, good performance will be incentivised and rewarded. 

This new culture of openness drives change and builds confidence that the NHS can learn and improve, which is crucial to restoring people’s faith in the NHS itself.  

And today I want to talk about the next steps we’re taking on our new operating model. The first step is a real empowerment of primary care and general practice. Already, the hard work and innovation of GPs across the country are helping to renew public confidence in the NHS as the reversal of a decade of declining patient satisfaction shows.  

And I know it’s not easy. The demands of a 21st century population, the demands of ageing and rising health need have led to unsustainable workloads. We’ve already halved the number of targets in the GP contract and are investing an extra £1.1 billion. But the bright future that general practice deserves will only come through fundamental modernisation. 

That’s why we’re introducing two new neighbourhood contracts. A single neighbourhood provider contract for the delivery of enhanced services, for patients, through expert, multi-disciplinary teams and a multi-neighbourhood provider contract to lead the Neighbourhood Health Service at scale.

This is taking the best of the NHS to the rest of the NHS. Learning from some of the trailblazing GP Federations already doing this. Pooling resources and expertise will deliver better services over larger areas, like frailty or end-of-life care, and deliver a more efficient back office so more of GPs time is spent with patients. And as Neighbourhood Health Services reduce demand on acutes, new, financial flows will see savings return to them, helping to accelerate the left shift.  

I should say at this point, just for the avoidance of doubt, because there might be more media attention on this speech than usual, our second step – reinvent the NHS Foundation Trust model for modern times. Today, we’re launching a new generation of Foundation Trusts called Advanced Foundation Trusts. They will be the front runners towards a more autonomous accountable and integrated NHS. 

And I can announce that eight trusts are in the running for this new status. They come from across the country from Dorset to Northumbria and they are a mix of acute mental health, and community Trusts. They represent both the best of our NHS and the diversity of NHS. Those who are successful will have demonstrated that they’re delivering on the public’s priorities. High quality care for patients, value for money and progress on the left shift. 

They’ll be the kind of providers who don’t need the sense of breathing down their neck or trying to micromanage their finances.  

And they will benefit from real and immediate freedoms, including the ability to reinvest surpluses accumulated last year in future capital projects, more operational, autonomy and fewer ad hoc requests from the centre. 

We’ll continue to open new freedoms and deliver greater autonomy for Advanced Foundation Trusts in the coming years. And in 10 years time, we want every Trust to have achieved that status. 

Our third step is the creation of Integrated Healthcare Organisations, or IHOs. Advanced Foundation Trusts will be among the first to take on IHO contracts and hold the whole health budget for a defined population. 

I’ve heard from so many leaders about how hard it can be to invest in prevention because the savings fall in another part of the system. IHOs will reverse this disincentive, if it makes sense to invest in community care to prevent unnecessary hospital admissions, they’ll be rewarded for doing just that. Any trust can become one, not just the big acutes.
And so there is no reason, by the way, they couldn’t be led by Primary Care professionals.

In fact, one of the two trusts currently under consideration for IHO status is a Community Trust. And that diversity will continue. If a nurse is best placed to lead a community service, a GP best place to lead a hospital or an acute Trust best place to lead Neighbourhood Health Services, well then that’s what they’ll do.  

Because what matters is what delivers for patients. None of this is simply a renaming exercise. However, technocratic it might sometimes appear or even feel. Good system architecture is how we bring to life the vision and ambition in the 10-year plan. 

I’m offering that as a reminder to myself as much as anyone else. We’re breaking the NHS out of its short-term cycles, annual plans of emergency, bundles of rolling crises, complex rules, unnecessary targets. Instead, our approach is, and will be, if you deliver for patients, if you manage your finances well, if you innovate, then you will have the space to lead.  

Because plans don’t deliver change people do, and this conference is a reminder that confidence comes from good leadership and that good leadership in the NHS has never mattered more. Great NHS leaders, listen to staff and patients and turn that listening into action. 

They don’t wait for permission to do the right thing. They don’t require a diktat from NHS, England, their attitude says we can do better, and we will. The difference now is that the system will support you to unleash your entrepreneurialism, creativity and innovation. All this adds up to a very different kind of NHS. 

It marks a fundamental shift from command and control to collaboration and confidence. And when people feel they are part of a system that learns listens and leads. Confidence returns and confidence is everything. The NHS was built on it, the confidence of a nation that believed in universal healthcare, free at the point of use. The confidence of staff, who knew they were part of something bigger than themselves. What we’re doing together is restoring that confidence. The coming years won’t be a walk in the park. There are no magic wands. No silver bullets. Keeping up momentum will require all of the energy and grit and initiative that’s got us heading in the right direction. 

We need to up our elective activity, to hit the ambitious targets the Prime Minister set us. To get people seen as quickly as possible in urgent and emergency care and to keep improving access to GPs, and we need to maintain our firm grip on the finances.  

But for the first time in years, the NHS can look forward with confidence rather than back in frustration, because we’ve got a plan, that’s not just ambitious and realistic. We’ve got a plan that is working and that is why the NHS is on the road to recovery. Thank you very much.

The speech made by Wes Streeting, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, at the ExCel centre on 23 June 2025.

Well thank you, Ranee, for your welcome, and thanks to the college for giving me this opportunity to address you today, and a warm welcome to those of you who’ve travelled from across the world to be here.

The National Health Service began with a literal birth. Aneira Thomas, named after my predecessor Aneurin Bevan, was born at one minute past midnight on the 5th of July 1948.

Since then, tens of millions of babies have been delivered by the NHS. Bringing new life into the world is a wonderful thing, and it’s great to be in a room full of the people who spend their professional lives supporting it. You know better than most that this is also a moment of risk and jeopardy for women and their babies, and that that risk is considerably higher than it should be because of the state of the crisis in our maternity and neonatal services here in the UK.

Within the past 15 years we’ve seen appalling scandals that blew the lid on issues ranging from care, safety, culture and oversight. Morecambe Bay, Shrewsbury and Telford, East Kent, Nottingham. The last government responded with initiatives like Better Births in 2016 and the Maternity Transformation Programme. But despite improvements on some metrics, inequalities in maternal and neonatal outcomes have become more visible, not less.

The rate of maternal deaths has been consistently rising. Babies of Black ethnicity are still more than twice as likely to be stillborn than babies of White ethnicity, and Black women are still 2 to 3 times more likely to die during pregnancy or shortly after birth than White women. Tragically, that gap is closing slightly, but partly because more White women are dying in childbirth. In September, the Care Quality Commission’s National Review of Maternity Services in England found that almost half of all trusts were rated as requiring improvement on safety. Another 18% were rated as inadequate.

There is a widespread lack of staff and in some places a lack of potentially life-saving equipment, and some services don’t even record incidents that have resulted in serious harm. Taxpayers who are footing the bill for our failure to get a grip with everything else I’ve just said. It’s no wonder clinical negligence payouts have reached an all-time high – £2.8 billion last year, with maternity accounting for 41% of all the money paid out.

These are the facts. But behind these alarming statistics are people and the lives that have been taken from them. I spent a lot of time with victims of NHS maternity and neonatal scandals and failures during the last year. Listening. Listening to them share with a total stranger the most personal, painful accounts of their experiences and the trauma that occurs when we fail them.

When I say ‘we’, I don’t just mean the maternity units that failed them. I mean NHS leaders and managers that put protecting their reputations over protecting patients. Or when we put legal advice that says do not admit liability over doing what is right by families. I mean the regulators who failed to hold them to account. And I mean politicians, including me, because the first step in putting this right is being honest about our own mistakes and failures.

And the truth is, we’re not making progress fast enough on the biggest patient safety challenge facing our country. And I know what that means. Because of the many hours I’ve spent with families left completely traumatised by our failure to get it right every time.

When I visit the Nottingham families, they arrange themselves around the horseshoe table in date order, with those whose experience goes furthest back sat to my left, and the most recent sat to my right. The most recent was just last year, and I honestly dread the prospect of going to another meeting with another family arriving at that end of the table with another story to tell. This time, one that has happened on my watch.

Across all of the meetings I’ve had every story is unique, but there are common themes. Some are there because their children died, some because their children suffered injuries that have left them with lifelong complications and disability. Others are women who suffered terrible life-changing injuries during childbirth, or fathers left traumatised and unsupported with severe mental health challenges.

I’ve seen photographs of their children. I’ve seen the ashes of their children in the tiniest little boxes, and I’ve also seen more courage than I could ever imagine mustering if I had to walk a day in their shoes. Carrying the weight of their trauma.

All of them have had to fight for truth and justice. They describe being ignored, gaslit, lied to, manipulated and damaged further by the inability for a trust to simply be honest with them that something has gone wrong. They talk to me about the trauma that they experience compounded time and time again. When a hospital trust or regulator simply turns their back on them, when all they’re searching for is answers.

It’s their bravery that has brought me to the place that I am today. I want to say publicly how sorry I am. Sorry for what the NHS has put them through. Sorry for the way they’ve been treated since by the state. And sorry that we haven’t put this right yet. Because these families are owed more than an apology. They’re owed change, they’re owed real accountability and they’re owed the truth.

So today I’m setting out a different approach to the one that’s failed before. We’re going to do it with rather than to these families. And we’re going to put the voices and experiences of mums, dads and children at the heart of our approach to improving quality, safety and accountability.

Maternity safety will become the litmus test for all safety in the NHS. I’m taking personal responsibility for it as Secretary of State and as the staff leading maternity and neonatal services. I need your help because we’re a team and I can’t do this without you. I know the majority of births in England are safe, and I urge all women to engage with their maternity service and raise any concerns they may have about themselves or their baby.

But for too long, those cases where things do go wrong have been swept under the carpet, and this cannot continue. I know I’m talking to an audience that will embrace this challenge. You will come to work every day to care for people. You are tired, tireless and dedicated in your work. I suspect you’re tired, too, with the pressures you’re under. You go to work to do the right thing, and every day there are healthy babies being delivered safely, with mums receiving great care.

But we also know that staff are being put in an impossible position far too often. It’s the moral dilemma I’ve heard from midwives, obstetricians and neonatologists across the country. They feel conflicted because they don’t feel their maternity ward or neonatal unit is delivering a safe service every time, and they don’t want to work in an unsafe environment. So they consider leaving. But they also tell me that if they walk away, they’d be letting it down even further.

This is not a choice any member of staff should have to face. And I’m aware that there’s a risk that we further demoralise a workforce that’s already been on its knees and felt battered working in an NHS in crisis. I also worry about the risk of causing unnecessary fear or anxiety among mums going into labour, and the dads and loved ones holding their hands through the experience is a dilemma I wrestle with all the time. But I won’t do any of us any favours if we’re not honest about the scale of the challenge, so that we can provide a response able to meet it.

Over the last year, I’ve been wrestling with how we tackle the problems in maternity and neonatal units. And I’ve come to the realisation that while there is action we can take now, we have to acknowledge that this has become systemic. It’s not just a few bad units up and down the country. Maternity units are failing. Hospitals are failing. Trusts are failing. Regulators are failing. There’s too much obfuscation, too much passing the buck and giving lip service, too much shrugging at a cultural problem that we fail to address.

Because of that, we have enormously wide race and class inequalities in maternity care. Women, especially Black, Asian and working class women, are not listened to or given the chance to be advocates for their own health. We have an implicit message from the system that tells women not to have a miscarriage at the weekend. We have women who are classed as having a normal birth still leaving traumatised and scarred. And most concerning of all, we have the normalisation of deaths of women and babies.

We must stop and stop now with the mindset that these things just happen. Our inability to deal with this goes wider than maternity, in fact wider than our health service. It goes to the very core of how Britain responds to state failure.

I should give a little context for my own outlook. I don’t have a conventional background for someone whose title is Right Honourable. I was born not far from here, actually, at the Mile End Hospital to teenage parents. I experienced poverty growing up and, beside a loving family, the reason I’m stood here today as a member of the British Cabinet is because the state got it right – in my case, council housing, a great state education, a welfare state that clothed and fed me.

But I also saw the way the state often treats people from backgrounds like mine. The way the DSS [Department of Social Security], the social security staff talked to my mum like she was dirt at the bottom of their shoes. The fights my grandmother used to have with Tower Hamlets Council when she ran the local tenants union. So I came into office with a healthy degree of cynicism and scepticism about the state. That doesn’t often come naturally to those of us with left-wing politics who fundamentally believe in an active state.

I’ll be honest with you, as I’ve listened to these family’s experiences of the state and NHS failure, that cynicism has boiled over into hot tears and real anger about what they’ve been put through and what they’re still living with. From the Horizon Post Office scandal to the infected blood scandal, the degradation of responsibility and trust in our institutions is compounding a cynicism and malaise at the ability of British politics, or even democracy, to deliver for people.

This is a dangerous place for a country to be. If we do not admit the scale of the failure in maternity services, we’re condemning ourselves to etching that mistrust deeper. If we cannot admit openly that we as institutions and as a state have got this wrong, we will never be able to fix it or rebuild that trust. Too many children have died because of state failure, and I will not allow this to continue under my watch.

So to face up to this, we have to change 2 fundamental things. First, we must ensure real accountability when things go wrong and give justice to those who’ve been wronged. Second, we must drive real improvements in maternity and neonatal care, which will require clear direction, a change of culture and for all of us to mobilise as a team to get this right.

Today I’m announcing a rapid national investigation of maternity and neonatal services, co-produced to include the families who have suffered the worst injustices of maternity care, modelled on the Darzi investigation into the state of the NHS. This will be an evidence-based investigation setting out what’s going wrong and priorities for action. It will look in detail at up to 10 maternity units that are giving us greatest cause for concern. And it will report directly to me by Christmas.

Crucially, the investigation team and terms of reference will be co-produced with the victims of maternity scandals. The investigation will also pull together the recommendations from the other reviews that have taken place to assess progress and provide clarity and direction for the future, so that everyone in the system knows what they’re working to.

I’m currently discussing with Leeds families the best way to grip the challenges brought to light in that trust by their campaigning reports in the media and the latest CQC report, and I’ll be ordering an investigation into 9 specific cases identified by families in Sussex who are owed a thorough account of what happened in those cases.

I’m also establishing a National Maternity and Neonatal Task Force, which I will chair, bringing together experts, staff, campaigners and representatives of families to help me drive improvement across the NHS.

We will call on international colleagues so that we understand what works and how to learn from the best and take to the rest, and the Royal College will have a really important role to play in that. I will also continue to meet families throughout the year, to give them a chance to hold me to account and provide them with a direct route to feedback.

To me, the taskforce will answer some of the most pressing issues the families have put at the top of the list. Namely, how can we ensure that women and their partners are always listened to when they raise concerns about their pregnancy or labour? What else should we be doing to save babies and women from dying or being severely harmed? How do we get better at spotting when things go wrong in units, and how do we tackle this before it grows?

We’ll also bring in a package of measures to start taking action now, increasing accountability across the board and bringing in the cultural change we need to see within the next month. The NHS Chief Executive, Jim Mackey, and Chief Nursing Officer, Duncan Burton, will meet the trusts of greatest concern including Leeds, Gloucester, Mid and South Essex, and Sussex to hold them to account for improvement working with the NHS leadership.

I will set strong and consistent expectations for trust chairs, chief executives and boards, with overhauled oversight and performance frameworks and a new performance dashboard. We’ll roll out the new MOSS digital system to flag potential safety concerns and trust much earlier, and support rapid action and roll out a national maternity and neonatal inequalities data dashboard.

Our 10 Year Plan and upcoming Dash review will look to tackle this safety crisis at its root, with an overhaul of the wider patient safety landscape. We will work to declutter this crowded landscape so that the patient experience works for patients again. I brought Mike Richards back to the CQC as chair to turn around that failing organisation, and I will work closely with him to make sure that the commission is working effectively on behalf of patients and the public.

Together, these measures will create real accountability, cut through the noise to prevent patterns spiralling and work towards tangible improvements for women and babies. I’m also going to do this with you, as well as the Royal College of Midwives and the other colleges and professional bodies.

The Royal College has a reach across the globe and there are maternity professionals from many, many countries here today. These challenges and maternity care are not just in our country. I want to learn from the best systems internationally, and then to showcase how we are taking on the challenge of tackling inequalities across pregnancy and birth head on. Strong clinical leadership really matters. I can’t do this without you. I’m committed to doing this with you, not to you.

So I know some of what I’ve said today will have been tough to hear, especially for people who give up their time early on a Monday morning to be here because you care about delivering safe and high quality care, and you take pride in your profession. Together, we’ll make sure that women and their partners feel heard and listened to, to make every birth a safe birth, to make high quality the hallmark of maternity services in this country and to banish avoidable maternity and baby deaths to the history books. So I’m looking forward to working with you in that endeavour.

Thank you very much.

The speech made by Wes Streeting, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, at Central Hall in Westminster, London on 13 May 2025.

It is a genuine pleasure to be here alongside so many friends – people I don’t yet know, but people we want to work with.

It’s great to have such a wide range of people and organisations represented around the room, who are creating spaces for men to fight loneliness.

Encouraging open conversations about masculinity and providing positive role models for boys across our country.

I want to thank you, Richard, for picking up this agenda and helping to force it into the mainstream.

Society has been slow to wake up to the fact that a lot of men and boys are really struggling today, and you’re playing a big role in correcting that.

And, as you alluded to in your remarks, making sure that this is a mainstream agenda and not one that is surrendered to the margins and the extremes.

So, I’m looking forward to working with you and your institute as we begin to develop solutions to the inequalities and injustices that men and boys face in our country today.

The truth is it can be quite tough to be a young man in today’s society.

Lots of boys, particularly those from working class backgrounds like mine, are falling behind at school and are worried about their futures.

The proliferation of toxic influences and content on social media is leading a lot of boys astray.

A lot of content on social media that provided a real challenge for girls in terms of positive body image and what it meant to be a perfect girl or a woman in our society – those challenges are now applying to men and boys in similar if sometimes different ways.

And all of this is contributing to a crisis in masculinity.

Since taking on the health and social care brief in opposition 3 and a half years ago, I’ve been very outspoken about the fact that it takes 7 and a half years for women to receive a diagnosis for a common condition like endometriosis, or that a universal experience like menopause is still treated as if it’s a rare condition affecting alien species.

And I feel just as enraged about the inequalities in men’s health, frankly.

Men are living 4 years less than women.

The gap widens if you just look at working class communities.

Men are disproportionately affected by cancer, cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.

The tragedy is that many of these conditions are treatable and even preventable.

Black men are twice as likely to die from prostate cancer as White men.

And suicide is the number one killer of men under the age of 50, which was a fact so shocking that I nearly fell off my chair when I first heard it and actually asked for the statistic to be checked. And the fact that it’s now more commonly cited should not make the fact itself less shocking or outrageous.

Nothing frustrates me more than when men’s health and women’s health are pitted in opposition to each other, as if by focusing on the men’s health strategy, we are in any way detracting from the work we’re doing on women’s health.

This is not an either or.

It very much has to be hand in hand, and we will address both.

And it also does a disservice to lots of women in our society, as if somehow women don’t care about their fathers and grandfathers, their brothers, their sons, their nephews any less than we care about our mothers or grandmothers, our sisters.

It’s really serious.

So I actually think that we are all in this together, and we will succeed as a society if we’re working together to tackle the injustices and inequalities that affect men and women.

There’s a common problem across the NHS that women’s voices are not heard, and women are not listened to.

When it comes to men, I think the problem is often we’re more reluctant to speak up in the first place.

One in 3 men have never had a conversation with a brother, father or grandfather about their health.

The same number would prefer to suffer in silence than go to the doctor about their mental health.

So, I think we’ve got to teach men from a young age that it’s okay to feel, to hurt and to ask for help.

Doing so doesn’t make you any less of a man.

And I think that making sure this generation of young men and boys are aware of that fact is how we make them less likely to channel their emotions into anger, aggression or depression.

This is all why we’re doing the first ever men’s health strategy.

I announced this last year at the Emirates Stadium to coincide with Movember, alongside a large number of men’s groups and organisations, charities and men’s health ambassadors.

It was a great event, but one of the things that came out of it on the day and since has never ceased to amaze me. And that is just how many people said, “thank you”.

That’s not just because as a politician, it’s rare for someone to say thank you.

I mean, to be fair, we’ve got to give people something to be grateful about.

But, actually, I was saying to people, look, you can thank us when we’ve done something.

All I’ve done is say we’re going to have a strategy.

We hadn’t even launched the call for evidence at that point.

When we’ve done something, when we’ve had an impact and we’ve started to change those statistics and change things about their lives and futures.

But actually the pushback I got was, no, actually, we’re genuinely grateful because we’ve been fighting for this for so many years and haven’t had a hearing, let alone someone being prepared to launch a call for evidence that will lead to a strategy.

And that tells us something about the extent to which men’s health has been overlooked, and particularly men’s mental health.

So we launched our call for evidence for the men’s health strategy in April, and I was about to say, I want to ask everyone who hasn’t responded yet to do so and spread the word further.

But actually, we have been really overwhelmed and really struck by just how positive and engaged such a large number of organisations have been.

But nonetheless, we want to make sure we engage as many men, as many organisations and as many different types of men and different parts of the country from different communities as we have.

Which is right.

We have to look at the data and we will take an evidence-based approach.

But as we know, statistics paint a picture to an extent, but what we also need to do is understand the story that we want to tell.

We’re talking about the experience of men and boys today and how we’re going to make it so much better, so we could do with more insight as well as data, especially from those grassroots organisations in this room and beyond, in a range of communities across the country, whether on physical health or mental health, whether we’re talking about White men or Black men, whether we’re talking about class inequality as well, which is at the heart of a lot of mental health. Any serious attempt to address mental health must confront these inequalities head on.

So, we’ve got our work cut out for us. Doing is a lot more important than talking.

We’ve done the easy bit, in my view.

We’ve committed to having a strategy to making a difference and making sure that we’re proud of the impact.

But in order to be successful, this isn’t just a challenge that government can address.

This is about government playing its part, but working in partnership with civil society, with businesses, with all of us as citizens to try and tackle what are a wide range of challenges and problems facing men and boys.

And that’s why this gathering is really important to me, the department and the government, because we need to do this with you rather than to you. And with this level of enthusiasm, this level of energy, we genuinely think we can do something impactful that we’ll be able to look back on for the rest of our lives with pride, knowing that we were prepared to confront the problems and the challenges head on, and make sure that boys growing up in this country today, whoever they are, whatever their background, can achieve their fullest potential and look forward to a life well lived, rather than experience the deep anxiety and despair far too many boys in our country are experiencing today.

So thank you very much in advance.

The speech made by Wes Streeting, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, in Liverpool on 9 April 2025.

Good morning conference.

Let’s start on a point of agreement.

The killing of 15 health and rescue workers in Gaza was an appalling and intolerable tragedy.

Healthcare workers in any context, in any part of the world, should never be a target.

The international community, or indeed any actors in any conflict, all have a responsibility to protect health and humanitarian aid workers and also to protect innocent civilians.

And it’s clear that in Gaza, as well as in other conflict zones around the world at the moment, the international community is failing and failing badly.

So I want to say, as a Unison member, I strongly support the sentiments expressed by our Healthcare Executive.

But on behalf of our government, we want to see a return to an immediate ceasefire.

We want to see aid in, people out of harm’s way, an end to this bloody conflict and a state of Palestine alongside a state of Israel, and the just and lasting peace that Israelis and Palestinians deserve.

I also have to say, having been to the West Bank with Medical Aid for Palestinians and seen first hand the work that they do supporting the health needs of Palestinians across the occupied Palestinian territories, they do brilliant work.

And I would fully endorse the sentiment of the motion in supporting them, and each of us putting our hands in our pockets to do that.

I’m proud to be here today as the first Health and Social Care Secretary to address a UNISON conference since Andy Burnham did 15 years ago—and proud to do so as a UNISON member.

My first ever parliamentary debate in 2015 was with UNISON, opposing the abolition of the NHS bursary. Since then, I’ve spoken on countless UNISON platforms across my time as Shadow Schools Minister, Shadow Child Poverty Minister, and Shadow Health & Social Care Secretary.

But today is different. This is the first time I speak to UNISON not as someone discussing what a Labour government should do, but what we are doing—delivering real change to transform society and improve working people’s lives.

Last July was historic. Labour returned to power with a thumping majority—only the fourth time in our history. It was a result made possible by UNISON’s support for Keir Starmer: helping to change the party, change the government, and now change the country. That victory brought 74 new UNISON MPs into Parliament, including Katrina Murray, Melanie Onn, Mark Ferguson, and my own PPS, Deirdre Costigan. Three UNISON MPs are now in the Department of Health and Social Care: Stephen Kinnock, Karin Smyth, and me.

We’re delivering the change people voted for. It’s not easy—and I know you’ll have questions and challenges. But we’re ready to engage. UNISON has always been a critical friend to Labour. The “critical” part is just as important as the “friend” part.

In the past nine months, nothing has shaken my conviction that we will get the NHS back on its feet and build a National Care Service worthy of the name.

Take Southport, for example. On July 29th, a senseless, mindless attack left children and adults bleeding, some dying, in a community centre. NHS staff responded with extraordinary courage—from paramedics and porters to receptionists and surgeons. But what happened next filled me with rage. Racist thugs attacked Filipino nurses, a Nigerian care worker’s car was torched, and GP surgeries had to close. These are people who came here to care for us. They represent the best of Britain.

Violence against NHS staff must end. One in seven NHS workers have suffered abuse. That shames us all. So today, I’m announcing mandatory national recording of incidents, data analysis to protect the most at-risk, and requirements for NHS trust boards to report on progress. Zero tolerance. Campaigned for by UNISON. Denied by the Tories. Delivered by Labour.

Too often, NHS staff are trained at great public expense, only to be driven out by poor treatment. Some end up working in Canada or Australia. We must retain talent and respect staff—through training, flexible working, and fair pay. That’s why we’re implementing a new digital system to fairly apply the Job Evaluation Scheme. A fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay. Campaigned for by UNISON. Denied by the Tories. Delivered by Labour.

I owe my life to NHS staff who treated me for kidney cancer. I’ll never be able to repay that debt, but I’ll try. You were there for me—I’ll be there for you.

We have a ten-year plan. The Conservatives left us with record waiting times and low satisfaction. Our mission: get the NHS treating patients on time, and reform it for the future.

We’ve engaged more than a million people in the biggest NHS consultation ever, including 3,000 staff meetings. The result, to be published this spring, will outline three goals:

• Shift care out of hospitals and into the community;

• Modernise the NHS with digital tools and technology;

• Build a preventative health service to tackle major killers.

This isn’t the staff’s fault. But we can’t fix it without you. I know how hard it is to fight a broken system. But help is coming. My message: stay and help us rescue it. We’re turning it around.

In nine months, we’ve already:

• Given NHS staff an above-inflation pay rise;

• Ended the resident doctors’ strikes;

• Invested £26 billion in health and care;

• Made the largest investment in hospices in a generation;

• Agreed the GP contract with £889 million in new funding;

• Reversed a decade of pharmacy cuts;

• Delivered 2 million extra appointments—seven months early;

• Diagnosed 80,000 suspected cancer cases early;

• Cut waiting lists for five months in a row.

On social care, we’ve delivered the biggest-ever increase to carers allowance—£2,300 extra a year—and introduced fair pay agreements as part of Labour’s Employment Rights Bill. That’s the first step in building a National Care Service.

And today, I can announce the first universal career structure in adult social care: four new job roles and millions in training investment.

Keir Starmer said his ambition is for his sister, a care worker, to be treated with the same respect as her brother, the Prime Minister. With Labour, she will be.

But we carry a huge responsibility—not just to NHS users, but to prove that the NHS can still deliver. On its 75th anniversary, most Britons were proud of the NHS. But 70% thought “free at the point of use” won’t survive the next decade.

Right-wing figures like Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage want to change that. Farage wants insurance-based models and to charge patients. Over my dead body.

We will always defend the NHS as a public service—free when you need it, no matter who you are.

Tories and Reform are willing us to fail. But the future of our party and our health service are bound together. The stakes are high. But the prize is huge: an NHS where workers are respected and patients get the care they deserve.

We can look back one day and say: we were the generation that rescued the NHS from its worst crisis and made it fit for the future.

Change has begun—and the best is still to come.

The comments made by Wes Streeting, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, on 11 November 2024.

For too long desperate hospitals have been forced to pay eye-watering sums of money on temporary staff, costing the taxpayer billions, and pulling experienced staff out of the NHS. We’re not going to let the NHS get ripped off anymore.

Last month the Chancellor made a historic investment in our health service which must reform or die. I am determined to make sure the money is well spent and delivers for patients.

These changes could help keep staff in the NHS and make significant savings to reinvest in the frontline.

The speech made by Wes Streeting, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, in Liverpool on 4 October 2024.

[We have approached the office of Wes Streeting for the full version of the speech]

I’d like to begin by saying a public thank you to you, Kamila, and, by extension, to your college. In opposition, we engaged in good-natured but robust debate on the things we disagreed on and, more often than not, found ourselves in violent agreement on the state of general practice today and our responsibility to rebuild general practice for a brighter tomorrow.

That relationship, based on mutual respect and a spirit of partnership, means I come here today feeling that I am not only among friends, but among teammates – a theme I’ll build upon in my speech this morning.

In that same spirit, can I also say a special thank you to Sunaina, Paula, Rumshia and Andy for those outstanding presentations.

You are proof that, while the NHS may be in the midst of the worst crisis in its history, the biggest asset we have are the people who work in it. More than that, you provide hope to a country that is desperately looking for it, because you are showing us not only is reform possible, but it is already happening, and you are showing us what a reformed NHS could look like.

I’m delighted to be the first Secretary of State personally addressing this conference in 7 years. I can’t imagine what the others were so worried about.

I imagine some of you were quite happy to not have to hear from my 7 predecessors who held the job in that time. The good news is I’m here this year, the bad news is, whether you cheer or boo, I’ll be back for more next year. For 2 reasons:

First, I always welcome challenge, and as you might have gathered by now, I love a good argument.

More seriously, I recognise that the health service is in a deep hole, and it’s only by working together that we’ll get out of it.

It’s my job to mobilise nearly 2 million people who work across the NHS to be the team that takes the NHS from the worst crisis in its history, gets it back on its feet, and makes it fit for the future.

I can’t do it on my own. We can only do it as a team.

The team spirit we need to build together starts with honesty.

The NHS is broken. That’s what 2 in every 3 patients believe. I suspect a poll of NHS staff would find the same sort of result. I’m yet to speak to a GP who tells me – on many of the visits I’ve done in the last few years – everything going really well, my workload is entirely manageable, this is just what I signed up for.

And I want to be clear about something else too: the NHS is broken, but GPs didn’t break it.

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And that’s not just my view – that’s effectively the conclusion of the Darzi investigation.

I know he’s a surgeon. Sorry about that.

But I think that, if you’ve read his report, the analysis is so stark and so clear that you might even forgive him for polyclinics.

Lord Darzi found, “GPs are expected to manage increasingly complex care, but do not have the resources, infrastructure and authority that this requires.”

Hospital resources have shot up, while primary care has been neglected. There are 1,500 fewer fully qualified GPs in the NHS today than 7 years ago.

While hospital productivity has fallen, the reverse is true in general practice. Despite there being fewer of you, you’re delivering more appointments than ever before – squeezing the time you spend with each patient. And as RCGP’s research this week revealed, it’s the poorest areas hit the hardest.

Cuts to capital investment mean that one in every 5 of you are working in buildings older than the NHS itself.

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In Lord Darzi’s words, “GPs were to all intents and purposes set up to fail.”

We’re left with a status quo that isn’t working for anyone. Not for patients, 2 in 3 of whom aren’t satisfied with the service they receive – a record low.

Nor does the status quo work for staff – you are working harder than ever before, pushing you to burn out and in too many cases pack it in.

Patients are frustrated they can’t see you. You’re frustrated you can’t meet their demands. It’s not sustainable.

The NHS is broken, but not beaten, and I think what unites all of us – staff, patients and, crucially, the evidence – is the shared conviction that continuity of care, what most people would call the ‘family doctor relationship’ really matters. It’s what drives patient satisfaction, your job satisfaction and better outcomes for patients.

It will be at the heart of this government’s plan to reimagine the NHS as much as a neighbourhood health service as a national health service.

We’ll shortly be embarking on a wide-ranging and deep engagement exercise to build our 10-year plan.

That 10-year plan for the NHS will deliver 3 big shifts in the focus of healthcare:

from hospital to community
analogue to digital
sickness to prevention
And general practice is fundamental to each one.

Just look at what the GPs who introduced me today are already doing.

Paula is using basic technology to meet demand for same-day appointments and giving patients a digital front door, leading the way on ending the 8am scramble.

Advances in big data are going to transform the NHS’s ability to end the cruel postcode lottery of health inequality. Rumshia is already showing us how – by taking screening, checks and care directly to the communities most in need – intervening early and preventing ill health from worsening, what we can already do.

And as Andy and Sunaina have shown, if we bring GPs together with colleagues from mental health services, community pharmacy and social care, all working in lockstep as one team, more patients can be treated in the comfort of their own home – where they want to be. That’s the neighbourhood health service we want to build. That’s the future of the NHS.

And I think we’ve seen in the last 3 months we’ve started as we mean to go on.

[Political content has been removed]

GPs were left qualifying into unemployment this summer. While patients can’t get a GP appointment, GPs couldn’t get a job.

You asked us to act, so we did – in what might be the first example in history of someone signing a petition that actually led to action.

I received RCGP’s petition, we cut red tape, found the funding and we’re recruiting an extra 1,000 GPs this year, our first step to fixing the front door of the NHS.

In my first week as Health and Social Care Secretary, I pledged to increase the proportion of NHS resources going to primary care. And in our first month, the government made a down payment on that pledge, providing practices with their biggest funding increase in years.

I’ve never pretended that one measure on GP recruitment or indeed the funding that was announced was a panacea. But given the £22 billion blackhole we inherited, and the painful cuts we’ve had to make and are having to make elsewhere, be in no doubt how hard we had to fight to deliver that extra funding. It was a serious statement of intent. A proof point. An early decision to demonstrate that we’re serious about rebuilding general practice.

Not everything is about more money. It’s also about less waste.

When I spend time shadowing GPs, one of the things they are dying to show me is the sheer amount of paperwork you are required to fill in to refer a patient.

I was genuinely stunned to hear about one practice that has to complete more than 150 different forms to refer patients into secondary care services.

Practices spend as much as 20% of their time on admin and work created by poor communications with secondary care.

This is intolerable. That time should be spent with patients.

That’s why today I can announce that Amanda Pritchard and I will launch a red tape challenge to bulldoze bureaucracy so GPs are freed up to deliver more appointments.

The challenge will be led by Claire Fuller and Stella Vig, primary and secondary care leaders who have their bulldozers at the ready. Tell them what’s working well, but more importantly what needs to change. We will listen, act and solve this problem together.

Amanda and I will receive the conclusion of this work in the new year. And NHS England will hold ICBs and trusts to account if they fail to act.

The other frustration I hear from staff and patients alike are the pointless appointments you’re forced to hold and patients are forced to attend. You didn’t go through 5 years of medical school plus 5 years of training to tick boxes. So where there are appointments that can be cut out, with patients seen by specialists faster and GPs’ time freed up to do what only GPs can do, we will act.

Starting in November, 111 online, which is available through the NHS app, will pilot directly referring women with a worrying lump to a breast clinic.

That means faster diagnosis for cancer patients.

And more GP appointments freed up.

Better for patients and better for GPs.

I suspect there are other cases that come across your desks every week, where a patient has been passed to you by someone else in the NHS to refer them on to someone else in the NHS. It is a waste of everyone’s time, including yours, and where you give us examples of patient pathways that can be simplified through appropriate patient self-referral or direct referral by other NHS services to save your time, we will act.

It’s not just that I value your time, I respect your profession and your expertise.

General practice is a specialism.

That’s why I am committed to the creation of a single register of GPs and specialist doctors and this government will legislate to give the GMC the power to do it.

It’s symbolic, but it’s also meaningful.

It reflects the partnership I want to build with this profession.

What I need from you in return, is goodwill and the same team spirit.

When the BMA’s GPC returned their ballot result on collective action, I wasn’t remotely surprised.

I know that after years of rising pressures, declining resources and a worsening service for patients, you feel it is your duty to sound the alarm.

And trust me, you weren’t the only ones who wanted to punish the previous government.

[Political content has been removed]

Capping appointments now will only punish patients and make the road to recovery steeper. Be in no doubt – it is shutting the door on patients.

Their care will suffer, receptionists will bear the brunt of their frustration, and the rest of the NHS will be left to pick up the pieces.

Worse still, our collective job will be made harder. Collective action really means collective failure.

Your message has been received. Not from this one vote, but from all the time I’ve spent in general practice in the past 3 years, literally looking over GPs’ shoulders, seeing what you deal with and the state of the crisis for myself.

There’s a reason that, back in July, I rejected the list of hospitals suggested to me for my first visit as Secretary of State, and instead went to Dr Ellie Cannon’s Abbey Medical Centre in North London.

I wanted to send a message that I understand how bad things are, and I am determined to fix them. But I can’t do that alone. We can only do this together.

So I ask GPs to stand down collective action and instead work with a new government that is serious about working with you, to rebuild our NHS together.

There are some tricky issues we’ll need to navigate together.

Take data.

It’s the future of the NHS.

Advances in genomics and data mean the NHS will be able to do things never before possible.

From the moment a child is born, we will know their risk of disease, giving you the tools you need to keep them healthy.

Cancer could be detected from its earliest signs, saving countless lives.

And the NHS will be able to treat patients with personalised medicine – far more effective, with fewer side effects.

That’s the prize waiting for us.

But beyond the day-to-day challenge of whether your machines reliably boot up and the number of passwords you have to enter across a range of applications, we don’t even share patients’ records across primary and secondary care.

I know there are issues we need to work through together around information governance, risk and liabilities. There’s also, let’s be honest, some producer interest in play.

But here’s the consequence of inaction.

Keir and I met a family at Alder Hey earlier this year. Their baby had heart surgery to save his life. When they’d taken the baby home and visited their GP, they weren’t just surprised to find their GP didn’t have sight of the hospital records, they were frightened. Imagine how those parents felt: a tiny life in their hands in front of a medical professional who had only a partial sight on their experience. Imagine how the GP felt, having to ask basic questions about fundamental aspects of that baby’s medical history.

So we need to work together to create a single patient record, owned by the patient, shared across the system so that every part of the NHS has a full picture of the patient.

This applies as much to research as to care. The two go hand in hand.

World-leading studies like the UK Biobank, Genomics England and Our Future Health are building up incredibly detailed profiles of our nation’s health.

Patients have given their consent for their data to be shared with these studies.

But we still see, far too often, that this data is not shared according to patients’ wishes.

That’s why I am directing NHS England to take away this burden from you. Just like they did during the pandemic, if a patient explicitly consents to sharing their data with a study, NHS England will take responsibly for making this happen. In return, we will demand the highest standards of data security.

My concern is that this isn’t just an information governance issue, it’s a culture issue that, unless addressed, will not only exacerbate the shortcomings of the system today, but also squander the potential of tomorrow.

A world in which genomics, AI and machine learning will combine to change our entire model of care – not simply to drive earlier diagnosis and treatment, but to predict and prevent illness in the first place – is a world that we’ve got to embrace.

The UK could lead the world in medical research.

The NHS, created in 1948, a single payer system, is ideally placed to harness the benefits of the revolution in science and technology in a way that Attlee and Bevan could never have imagined 76 years ago.

This isn’t just about the system, the model, but also the ethos. Why do we pay our taxes into an NHS that is free at the point of use? Of course it is because we all derive a personal benefit, but it is also because we are paying in for the common good. In this century, our data will be as valuable as our taxes: we contribute our data in the knowledge that it will lead to more personalised medicine, but also because it will contribute to better care for everyone.

It is that collectivist ethos that created the NHS in 1948 to see us through the 20th century, that will underpin an NHS fit for the 21st century.

Nothing I have seen or experienced in the last 3 months as our country’s Health and Social Care Secretary has weakened my conviction that, while the NHS may be broken, it is not beaten.

But the future isn’t just in my hands, it’s in yours too.

The 3 shifts that underpin this government’s reform agenda:

From hospital to community.

Analogue to digital.

Sickness to prevention.

Those shifts aren’t new ideas and they aren’t radical.

But delivering them really would be.

I can’t do it on my own.

I need every part of the NHS to pull together as one team with one purpose:

To be the generation that took the NHS from the worst crisis in its history, got it back on its feet and made it fit for the future.

That’s the mission of this government and I’m confident that together we will rise to it.

Thank you.

The speech made by Wes Streeting, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, on 25 September 2024.

Dave has worked in the ambulance service for nearly thirty years.

But nothing could have prepared him for what he faced on Monday the 29th of July.

He arrived on the scene in Southport to find children who had gone to dance to Taylor Swift, and the adults whose sole purpose was to bring joy to their young lives, lying bleeding, some tragically dying.

The result of an unimaginable, senseless, mindless attack.

I listened to Dave describe the split-second decisions he had to make, of who to treat, in what order, to give them the best chance of survival.

And I heard how the whole NHS team came together: security rushing children through busy hospital corridors; technicians mobilising blood supplies; reception fielding calls from panic-stricken parents; and surgical teams fighting to save those young lives.

Those heroes represent the very best of the NHS, and we owe them a debt of gratitude we can never repay.

Conference, I can’t tell you the weight of responsibility I feel to make sure that the National Health Service that has been there for us since 1948, is there for the next century and beyond.

And I tell you, I will not let you down.

But the truth is, Conference, right now the NHS is letting people down.

Let me tell you about Claire, who messaged me on Instagram.

She is a stage four cancer patient.

When she felt pain two years ago, she struggled to get diagnosed.

Her employer provides private health insurance, and for the first time in her life, Claire used it.

Had she stayed with the NHS, Claire is certain she’d be dead.

Instead, she’s been able to live her life to the full, including getting married in Ibiza.

Every cancer patient deserves world-class care.

But for every person like Claire, who was able to go private, there are thousands more who can’t.

That cruel lottery is the legacy of 14 years of Conservative neglect.

That is the two-tier system of healthcare that Labour will end.

And that is why we must reform our NHS.

It starts with honesty.

So I asked Lord Darzi – a cancer surgeon with 30 years’ experience – to lead an independent investigation into our National Health Service.

The results are grim.

100,000 toddlers and babies left waiting for six hours in A&E last year.

Cancer – more likely to be a death sentence here than in other countries.

Nearly three million people off work sick.

Waiting lists at record highs.

Patient satisfaction at a record low.

And the fundamental promise of the NHS, that it will be there for us when we need it, has been broken.

Broken by a decade of underinvestment; by a disastrous Tory top-down reorganisation; and by ditching the reforms made by the last Labour Government.

All of this meant that when the pandemic hit – our NHS was on its knees, and hit harder than any other comparable healthcare system.

It’s not that the Tories didn’t fix the roof while the sun was shining, they doused the house in petrol, left the gas on, and Covid just lit the match.

That’s why millions are stuck on waiting lists.

That’s why ambulances don’t arrive on time.

That’s why you can’t see your GP.

Never forgive, never forget, never let the Tories do it again.

I know the doctor’s diagnosis can sometimes be hard to hear. But if you don’t have an accurate diagnosis, you won’t provide the correct prescription.

And when you put protecting the reputation of the NHS above protecting patients, you’re not helping the NHS – you’re killing it with kindness.

So I say respectfully, but unequivocally, I won’t back down.

The NHS is broken but not beaten, and together we will turn it around.

Make no mistake, the Tories had a plan for the NHS: mismanaged decline; a status quo so poor, people are forced to raid their savings to go private; a crisis so bad that seven in ten people now expect charges for NHS care to be introduced.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again.

Over my dead body.

We will always defend our NHS as a public service, free at the point of use, so whenever you fall ill, you never have to worry about the bill.

We can only deliver recovery through reform.

Without action on prevention, the NHS will be overwhelmed.

Without reform to services, we’ll end up putting in more cash for poorer results.

That’s the choice.

Reform or die. We choose reform.

Since the general election we’ve hit the ground running.

We inherited the farce of newly qualified GPs facing unemployment.

Patients can’t get a GP appointment, while GPs couldn’t get a job.

We cut red tape, found the funding, and we’ll have 1,000 more GPs treating patients.

That’s the difference a Labour government makes.

We are banning junk food ads targeted at children.

The first step towards making our country’s children the healthiest generation that has ever lived.

That’s the difference a Labour government makes.

Strikes have crippled the NHS, cost taxpayers billions and saw 1.5 million appointments cancelled.

My predecessor, the previous Conservative Health Secretary hadn’t even bothered to meet the junior doctors since March.

I called them on day one, met them in week on, and in just three weeks we negotiated a deal to end the strikes.

That’s the difference a Labour Government makes.

Ending the junior doctor strikes was central to our commitment to deliver 40,000 more appointments a week.

But as well as getting staff back to work, we need to get them working at the top of their game.

We’re sending crack teams of top clinicians to hospitals across the country to roll out reforms – developed by surgeons – to treat more patients and cut waiting lists.

And I can announce today that the first twenty hospitals targeted by these teams will be in areas with the highest numbers of people off work sick.

Because our reforms are focused not only on delivering our health mission but also moving the dial on our growth mission too.

We will take the best of the NHS to the rest of the NHS, get sick Brits back to health and back to work.

That’s the difference a Labour government makes.

But Conference we can’t fix the NHS without fixing the crisis in social care.

And we can’t fix social care without the people who work in it.

I loved what Keir said yesterday about his sister, a care worker.

About his determination to make sure that when she walks into a room and tells people what she does for a living, that she receives the same respect as the Prime Minister.

As the Secretary of State for Social Care, I won’t let Keir down or fail more than a million care professionals like his sister.

Angela and I will deliver a New Deal for Care Professionals: a Fair Pay Agreement, to improve pay and conditions and give staff the status and respect they deserve – our first step towards building a National Care Service.

Every day in this job I see the scale of the challenge. But I also see something else: the potential of our NHS.

The Tories’ biggest betrayal wasn’t that they left the NHS unable to care for us today.

It’s that they left it totally unprepared for tomorrow.

Advances in genomics and data mean the healthcare of the future will be more predictive, more preventative and more personalised than ever before.

Detecting from birth a child’s risk of disease so we can act to keep them well; spotting cancer earlier, saving countless lives; treating patients with targeted medicines.

To make these advances a reality for the many not the few, we need a universal health service, free at the point of need – able to share data, partner with innovators, and adopt new technologies at scale.

Such a service would be unique in the world.

Conference, the good news is, that service already exists – it’s called the National Health Service.

And our job is not just to get the NHS back on its feet, we must make it fit for the future.  And that is what our ten-year plan will achieve.

Conference, if we get this this right, we will end two-tier healthcare in our country for good.

So that preventative care, precision medicine, personalised treatment are no longer just for the few, but for the many.

That fairer future is possible. But only if we act today.

An NHS running on fax machines can’t seize these opportunities.

But a reformed NHS can.

From analogue to digital, from hospital to community, from sickness to prevention

Reform is not just possible, it is happening.

From AI detecting skin cancer and cutting waiting times to weight loss jabs slashing the risk of heart attacks for diabetes patients.

But Conference, to seize that potential we have to reform the NHS to make it fairer.

When the wealthy receive a diagnosis, they already know the best surgeons and can push to get the best care. But working people can’t.

If the wealthy are told to wait months for treatment, they can shop around. But working people can’t.

And if they pay top dollar, the wealthy can be treated with cutting-edge equipment and technology. But working people can’t.

Our ten-year plan will give all patients – rich and poor alike – the same information, the same choice, the same control.

Now I know there are some on the left who cringe at this. Who view choice as somehow akin to marketisation.

But our party has always believed that power should be in the hands of the many, not the few.

That public services exist to serve the interests of the pupil, the passenger, the patient above all else.

That world class services shouldn’t just be the preserve of the wealthy.

So starting in the most disadvantaged areas, we will ensure patients’ right to choose where they are treated, and we will build up local health services so it’s a genuine choice.

And where there’s capacity in the private sector, patients should be able to choose to go there too, free at the point of use, paid for by the NHS.

Because working people deserve to be treated on time, just as much as the wealthy.

Conference, when we look around our country today, it’s easy to be pessimistic. But the public have turned to us to give them hope. So here it is: we are in the foothills of a decade of national renewal.

10 years in which our country and our health and care services will change enormously.

The NHS transformed into a Neighbourhood Health Service.

A digital health service powered by cutting-edge technology.

A preventative health service that helps us stay healthy and out of hospital.

And a new National Care Service, ensuring people can live dignified and fulfilling lives

That’s the change that lies before us.

It will take time and it won’t be easy.

We will have to fight loud opposition, cynicism, and vested interests.

But Conference, bring it on.

It is up to us to prove that politics can be a force for good again.

So let me to say to every one of you in this hall and to the millions of dedicated staff in health and social care across our country.

We are the generation that will take the NHS from the worst crisis in its history to build an NHS fit for the future.

We are the generation that will build a National Care Service worthy of the name.

The NHS there for us when we need it.

With world class care for the many, not just the few.

That’s the change Britain voted for.

That’s the change we’ll deliver together.

And Conference, that change has already begun.

Thank you.

The statement made by Wes Streeting, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, on 5 July 2024.

When we said during the election campaign, that the NHS was going through the biggest crisis in its history, we meant it.

When we said that patients are being failed on a daily basis, it wasn’t political rhetoric, but the daily reality faced by millions.

Previous governments have not been willing to admit these simple facts. But in order to cure an illness, you must first diagnose it.

This government will be honest about the challenges facing our country, and serious about tackling them.

From today, the policy of this department is that the NHS is broken.

That is the experience of patients who are not receiving the care they deserve, and of the staff working in the NHS who can see that – despite giving their best – this is not good enough.

When I was diagnosed with kidney cancer, the NHS saved my life.

Today, I can begin to repay that debt, by saving our NHS.

I have just spoken over the phone with the BMA junior doctors committee, and I can announce that talks to end their industrial action will begin next week.

We promised during the campaign that we would begin negotiations as a matter of urgency, and that is what we are doing.

This government has received a mandate from millions of voters for change and reform of the NHS, so it can be there for us when we need it once again.

It will take time – we never pretended that the NHS could be fixed overnight.

And it will take a team effort. It will be the mission of my department, every member of this government, and the 1.4 million people who work in the NHS, to turn our health service around.

We have done this before. When we were last in office, we worked hand in hand with NHS staff to deliver the shortest waits and highest patient satisfaction in history. We did it before, and together, we will do it again.

That work starts today.