Wes Streeting has warned that the NHS is “not just on its knees, it’s on its face” amid a major funding row.
The Health Secretary said that billions of pounds already set aside by Rachel Reeves ahead of the Budget would only “arrest the decline” but not turn it around.
He has already admitted the additional funding set to be announced by the Chancellor is unlikely to deliver major improvements and will not prevent patients dying while waiting for care this winter.
“There’s no beating about the bush about it – whether it’s the size of the waiting list, the fact that people can’t guarantee an ambulance turns up on time, the struggle to get a GP appointment or a dentist, the waits in A&E, the NHS is not just on its knees, it’s on its face,” he told GB News.
The money coming in the Budget will allow the health service to double the number of scanners and start cutting NHS waiting lists in line with Labour’s manifesto pledges, he said.
“I think people are realistic. They know that we’re not going to turn the NHS around in just a few months or in a single budget.
“It’s going to take time and that’s why the Chancellor is prioritising the NHS in her Budget.
“We are linking that investment also to reform, because everything I said in opposition about waste and inefficiency in the NHS, the need to improve productivity, and we can’t keep on pouring more money in without reform – all of those things stand.”
He added: “Whether it’s health tourism, whether it’s the right staff in the right place, waste, inefficiency, bureaucracy, beyond the Budget I’ll be setting out steps in the coming weeks to make sure that as well as the extra investment going in being linked to reform, we also take a long, hard look at where money is currently spent in the NHS.”
His gloomy assessment threatens to overshadow the Chancellor as she prepares to focus heavily on the health service in the Budget.
Ms Reeves will unveil plans to raise capital spending on new hospitals, scanners and technology to the highest level since 2010.
Helen Morgan, the Liberal Democrats health and social care spokesperson, said: “Millions are waiting in pain and distress for the care they need.
“It is disappointing that the new government is not showing the ambition that this country needs to get the NHS back on its feet.
“If arrested decline is the best they can do, I fear that people will only continue to wait too long for treatment.”
Dr Ian Higginson, vice president of The Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said doctors and patients are facing what could be “the most challenging winter yet”, with many emergency departments ‘already bursting at the seams’.
He added: “There is no mention of short or long-term measures to ease the current unacceptable situation in our A&Es which sees vulnerable patients forced to endure extremely long waits often on trolleys in corridors.
“These waits are associated with hundreds of excess deaths every week. That will continue to happen if nothing changes.”
