Keir’s vision for the NHS – but how will he pay for it?
SIR Keir Starmer made a string of pledges to cut NHS waiting times and improve the nation’s health yesterday – but dodged questions about the cost of his plans.
The Labour leader said he would slash waiting lists, reduce cardiovascular disease deaths and hit targets on cancer treatment within the first five-year term of a Labour government.
But experts said his proposals were ‘extremely ambitious’ and it was unlikely the promises could be met in this timeframe.
Sir Keir claimed the NHS was ‘on the line’ at next year’s general election and the health service ‘ would not survive five more years’ under a Conservative government.
But his speech setting out the third of Labour’s five missions in government was light on detail and he evaded questions on how much additional funding would be needed.
Tory officials accused Sir Keir of copying recent government announcements on waiting lists, advertising and AI.
A Conservative source said: ‘After so much fanfare, Starmer’s long-awaited mission for health turns out to be almost entirely cribbed from the Government’s recently announced plans for cutting NHS waiting lists. Sir Copycat has been caught out pinching someone else’s homework and passing it off as his own.
‘He has clearly skipped maths as well because his pilfered, cobbled-together commitments are completely unfunded.’
Health minister Will Quince said: ‘It’s easy to shout from the sidelines, but the truth is Labour in Wales are currently missing all the targets Sir Keir Starmer has just set out for England. Labour have been running the health service in Wales for 25 years and haven’t met these targets. Sir Keir has a record of changing his mind – we can’t trust these will be Labour’s targets next week, let alone in five years’ time.’
Sir Keir said yesterday: ‘Some people will tell you this is purely a question of money. And money is part of it – I don’t deny that.
‘But what’s more important now – I really believe this – is to show our recipe for reform, to put forward a vision of a renewed NHS that can make the most of the money we invest in it. I’ve run a public service – I know that money makes a difference. But it only takes you so far.’
When challenged on the costs of his reforms, Sir Keir said: ‘Let’s just call a spade a spade – where we’ve made a proposal about the change we’re going to make, we’ve said how it’s going to be funded. So this challenge you put to me that we’ve not said where the money is coming from, it’s just wrong.’
Labour officials said £3.2 billion would be raised for the reforms by closing the tax loophole for ‘non-doms’, with additional money available from private equity tax reform.
Nigel Edwards, chief executive of the Nuffield Trust think-tank, said: ‘The Labour Party’s proposals to tackle both the big killers and deteriorating waiting times, while shoring up care given closer to home, are welcome but extremely ambitious.
‘And delivering them will require time, staff and more long-term funding than Labour have so far pledged.’
Chris Thomas, of the Institute for Public Policy Research, said: ‘Labour is right in its ambition to create a 21st-century plan for a 21st-century NHS. But there also needs to be a plan for investment alongside these bold reforms to help make such an aspirational target believable.’
IT’S hard to fault Sir Keir Starmer’s vision for the health Service. Targets to cut waiting times, more staffing, revolutionise community care, slash post-Covid waiting lists. On exactly how to achieve these laudable aims, he is less forthcoming.
The truth is that without root-and-branch reform and an actual strategy to defibrillate the gasping nhS, he is just another Labour politician with big ideas but no delivery.
his posturing brings to mind the old proverb: If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.