Streeting defends highlighting NHS’s failings as report claims health officials worried negativity will ‘spook patients’
In his speech Wes Streeting, the health secretary defended his decision to publish a report from Lord Darzi highlighting huge problems with the NHS. The findings were “grim”, he said. He went on:
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.
The BBC is today reporting that there is growing unease in the NHS about Streeting’s decision to label the NHS as broken. (On his first day in office, Streeting put out a statement saying: “From today, the policy of this department is that the NHS is broken.”) In his report, Nick Triggle says:
One hospital leader told the BBC: “We understand the politics of what the government is doing – they feel they need to establish in the public’s mind what a difficult inheritance they have been given … But there’s an increasing nervousness that if it continues much longer it could spook patients and make it really difficult to raise staff morale. Hope is important.”
Similar views are being expressed privately at NHS England. Sources there said officials had made the government aware of its concerns about the messaging and is monitoring the impact it is having on patients coming forward for check-ups and appointments.
Streeting did not explicitly refer to these claims in his speech. But the line about the importance of a “doctor’s diagnosis” can be read as a rebuttal.
And Streeting even used a phrase in his speech specifically criticised in the BBC report. Triggle quoted an unnamed hospital leader saying talk of a cancer diagnosis being a death sentence in the UK was “the wrong tone”. The source was talking about Streeting, and his officials, saying that because of poor survival rates, cancer is more likely to be a death sentence in the UK than elsewhere. Presumably Streeting read Triggle’s report, but it did not stop him using the same phrase again today. In his speech he said:
Cancer – more likely to be a death sentence here than in other countries.
Key events
The third speaker in the debate covered one of the non-controversial motions.
The chair is now taking the votes, by a show of hands.
The second speaker was Ellie Emberson, a Unite member and a delegate from Reading West and Mid Berkshire. She said she was a student and she was speaking against the motion, even though it was proposed by her own union. And she said she hoped her nan, who reads the Daily Mail, is not watching. She said she was backing the leadership on the winter fuel payments cut because she accepted that the government had to stablise the economy. She said it was important for delegates to be patient.
We are getting a debate. The chair has said there is time for three speakers.
Maggie Cosin, a delegate from Dover and Deal, is speaking. She is defending the winter fuel payments cut.
She says she gets £200 a year from the winter fuel payment, and gives it to a food bank. She does not need it.
And she says the increase in the value of the pension is worth far more anyway.
Quoting Nye Bevan, she describes this motion as “an emotional spasm”.
And she says delegates should not vote against the leadership to give the Telegraph a story to “bash” the government with.
Liz Kendall, the work and pensions secretary, addressed the conference earlier, before Sharon Graham proposed the Unite motion on winter fuel payments. This is what Kendall said about the cut.
Conference, focusing winter fuel payments on the poorest pensioners wasn’t a decision we wanted or expected to make.
But when we promised we could be trusted with taxpayers’ money, we meant it.
And when we’re faced with a £22 billion black hole which the Tories left this year – we had to act.
Because we know what happened when Liz Truss played fast and loose with the public finances.
It was working people and pensioners on fixed incomes who paid the highest price.
That is why we took what I know is a very difficult decision.
Alan Tate from the CWU seconded the Unite motion on the winter fuel payments cut. He said:
The CWU has been inundated with emails and calls from our retired members worried about choosing between heating and eating. Experts are warning that this could increase the risk of illness or even death for vulnerable people this winter.
Now we’ve heard from both the prime minister and the chancellor describing this cut as a tough choice the conference.
The tough choice is not about switching off pensioners’s heating this winter. The real choice is about picking up the phone for the tech giants like Amazon and the ultra wealthy and making them pay their share, their fair share of tax.
That may be about as far as the debate will go. The conference is dealing with a series of composite motions this morning, and the next speaking is supporting a motion on a different issue.
Graham says it’s wrong to cut winter fuel payment while super-rich left ‘untouched’
In her speech Sharon Graham, the Unite general secretary, said:
Friends, people simply do not understand, I do not understand, how our new Labour government can cut the winter fuel allowance for pensioners and leave the super-rich untouched.
This is not what people voted for. It is the wrong decision and needs to be reversed.
Friends, we are the sixth richest economy in the world. We have the money. Britain needs investment, not austerity mark two. We won’t get any gold badge for shaving peanuts off our debt.
These fiscal rules are self-imposed and the decision to keep them is hanging like a noose around our necks.
Friends, our public services and British industry need investment now. It’s no good having sympathy for workers at Grangemouth losing their jobs. They don’t need pity. They need Labour to step up to the plate and not allow a billionaire, who buys a football club as a hobby, to throw these workers on the scrap heap.
We cannot leave Britain at the whim of footloose corporations.
Hoping for them to invest is a prayer not a plan.
Yes, Britain is broken. Yes, the Tories have left a mess and yes, they are to blame.
But Labour is now in government, and we can’t keep making everyday people pay. Friends, I keep hearing, ‘a wealth tax is too difficult, would take too long’.
I say absolute rubbish. We seem to be able to get workers paying their taxes in a matter of weeks!
The system is rigged and the country knows it.
Unite leader Sharon Graham opens Labour debate on reversing winter fuel payments cut
At the Labour conference the debate on the winter fuel payment motion is starting.
Sharon Graham, the Unite general secretary, is speaking.
She is moving a composite motion that says Labour should:
1. Reverse the introduction of means-testing for the Winter Fuel Allowance
2. Ending fiscal rules which prevent borrowing to invest
3. Commit to public services and infrastructure, ensuring any public expenditure gaps, at a minimum, are restored through taxing wealth and that there are no further cuts to welfare provision for working people and pensioners.
4. Introducing a wealth tax on the top 1%, an excess profits tax, equalise capital gains tax with income tax and apply national insurance to investment income
5. Delivering the investment necessary for a workers’ transition to Net Zero
Streeting calls for national debate on whether smoking should be banned in pub gardens
In his interview with Sky News Wes Streeting, the health secretary, also suggested he would like to see a national debate on whether smoking should be banned in outdoor spaces, like pub gardens.
In the summer it emerged that a ban of this kind is being considered by the government.
Streeting said:
We are looking at a range of other measures to also help people who are currently smoking to quit and also to deal with the scourge of second-hand smoke and passive smoking, which is also harmful. We’ll be setting out our proposals on that shortly.
Asked if he will ban smoking outside pubs, he said:
Look, that’s one of the measures that I’m considering, and I’m up for a national debate on this issue.
We have got to do two things – reform the health service, but also reform public health, because we might be living longer, but we’re becoming sicker sooner and there is a heavy price being paid for that in our economy, our public finances and in our own health.
NHS waiting lists will be ‘demonstrably lower’ by time of next election, Streeting says
In an interview with Sky News, Wes Streeting said waiting lists would be “demonstrably lower” than they are now. He said:
By the next general election, waiting lists will be demonstrably lower because I know that’s how I will be judged, how the prime minister will be judged, how the government will be judged – people will judge us by our actions, not just our words ultimately.
The most recent figures showed the NHS England waiting list for treatments at 7.62m in July, relating to 6.39m people.
Streeting says, as national service, NHS ideally suited to maximise benefits from advances in genomics and data
But Wes Streeting’s speech was not all negativity about the NHS. He also argued that, as a national service, it had data-sharing potential that made it ideally suited to maximise the benefits that technological advances will bring. He explained:
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.
Streeting said some of this reform was already happening. And he said that he wanted to ensure NHS patients get the same choices available to people who go private. He said:
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.
This passage could have come straight out of a speech by Alan Milburn in the Tony Blair years; extending patient choice in the NHS was one of their top priorities.
Streeting defends highlighting NHS’s failings as report claims health officials worried negativity will ‘spook patients’
In his speech Wes Streeting, the health secretary defended his decision to publish a report from Lord Darzi highlighting huge problems with the NHS. The findings were “grim”, he said. He went on:
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.
The BBC is today reporting that there is growing unease in the NHS about Streeting’s decision to label the NHS as broken. (On his first day in office, Streeting put out a statement saying: “From today, the policy of this department is that the NHS is broken.”) In his report, Nick Triggle says:
One hospital leader told the BBC: “We understand the politics of what the government is doing – they feel they need to establish in the public’s mind what a difficult inheritance they have been given … But there’s an increasing nervousness that if it continues much longer it could spook patients and make it really difficult to raise staff morale. Hope is important.”
Similar views are being expressed privately at NHS England. Sources there said officials had made the government aware of its concerns about the messaging and is monitoring the impact it is having on patients coming forward for check-ups and appointments.
Streeting did not explicitly refer to these claims in his speech. But the line about the importance of a “doctor’s diagnosis” can be read as a rebuttal.
And Streeting even used a phrase in his speech specifically criticised in the BBC report. Triggle quoted an unnamed hospital leader saying talk of a cancer diagnosis being a death sentence in the UK was “the wrong tone”. The source was talking about Streeting, and his officials, saying that because of poor survival rates, cancer is more likely to be a death sentence in the UK than elsewhere. Presumably Streeting read Triggle’s report, but it did not stop him using the same phrase again today. In his speech he said:
Cancer – more likely to be a death sentence here than in other countries.
Union delegates at Labour’s annual conference have staged a noisy protest ahead of a debate on the government’s controversial decision to cut winter fuel allowance, PA Media reports. PA says:
Members of Unite gathered outside the conference hall, shouting: “Save the winter fuel”, alongside the union’s general secretary Sharon Graham.
She will address the conference later to urge the government to reverse its decision.
Wearing a t-shirt bearing the slogan “Save The Winter Fuel”, she said the prime minister had made a “mis-step” on cutting the allowance, and should reverse it.
“The government is picking the pockets of pensioners and people are furious,” she said.
“We will continue to campaign to have the allowance put back into pensioners’ pockets.”
Unite’s motion calling for the cut to be reversed was due to be debated earlier this week, but was changed to today, the final day of the conference.
The motion is also backed by the Communication Workers Union but CWU officials will not be at the conference today as they are attending the funeral in Scotland of the union’s former assistant general secretary Andy Kerr, who used to be on Labour’s national executive.
Photograph: Oli Scarff/AFP/Getty Images
Starmer says politicians should talk more about trade-off they have to make in deciding policy
Rowena Mason
One of the most significant passages in Keir Starmer’s conference speech yesterday was the passage where he talked about trade-offs in politics, and how it was important to tell people that to achieve positive outcomes, they sometimes had to accept consequences they might not like.
Speaking to reporters on his flight to New York, Starmer said this was something politicians did not talk about enough. Talking about his speech, he said:
It’s the first [conference] we’ve had for 15 years with Labour in government, but also really importantly, the first big opportunity to say not only what are we doing – the sort of ‘what did we inherit’, the doom and gloom if you like, and the immediate difficult decisions – but also why are we doing it …
I’m convinced that if we take the difficult decisions now, we can get to where we need to. So that was part of it.
Obviously, I’ve wanted to have my say about the trade-offs that I think are needed because I don’t think we discuss those enough.
Streeting says programme to speed up hospital operation will prioritise areas with highest rates of economic inactivity
At the Labour conference in Liverpool Wes Streeting, the health secretary, is speaking now.
According to an overnight briefing from the party, he will say that parts of the country with the highest number of people out of work due to ill health will receive priority support to cut NHS waiting lists.
The briefing says:
Under the plans, teams of leading clinicians are being sent to hospitals to roll out their reforms and get patients treated faster.
Top doctors who have developed new ways of working are delivering up to four times more operations than normal. Operating theatres at Guys and St Thomas’s in London run like a formula one pit stop to cut time between procedures.
The teams are starting with 20 hospital trusts in the parts of the country with the biggest rates of economic inactivity.
I will post more from the speech when I’ve seen the full text.
Starmer says £20,000 accommodation donation was to stop reporters outside family home disrupting son’s exams
Keir Starmer has said that he accepted accommodation during the election period so that his son, who was doing GCSEs, would not be disrupted by journalists regularly doorstepping their family home.
In the register of members’ interests, Starmer has declared accepting a gift of accommodation from Lord Alli, a longstanding Labour donor. It is valued at £20,437, covering the period from 29 May to 13 July.
The home used by the Starmers has been described in reports as a £18m penthouse.
In an interview with the Today programme, explaining why he accepted the donation, Starmer said:
My boy, 16, was in the middle of his GCSEs. I made him a promise, a promise that he would be able to get to his school, do his exams, without being disturbed.
We have lots of journalists outside our house where we live and I’m not complaining about that, that’s fine.
But if you’re a 16-year-old trying to do your GCSEs and it’s your one chance in life – I promised him we would move somewhere, get out of the house and go somewhere where he could be peacefully studying.
Somebody then offered me accommodation where we could do that. I took that up and it was the right thing to do.
In the same interview, he also explained, in more detail than before, his decision to accept gifts of clothing and tickets to football matches.
On clothing, he implied that because of the campaign, he was short of time to buy clothes himself. He said:
In a busy election campaign, as we’ve had this year, where I’m across the country pretty well all the time, we had people coming forward saying ‘I can help’, and some people came forward and said ‘I can help by donating clothes, so you don’t have to worry about that and [you can] get on with it.’
He said that was “in opposition, when we were running around”. He said he would not be accepting clothing donations again.
And, on football, he said that he had a season ticket to Arsenal, and went to matches with his son. But as a result of security they could not to in the stands. Arsenal had offered him the option of going into the directors’ box when he wanted to attend a match, he said. He said he could not pay for that, because “you can’t buy a ticket in the directors’ box”. Accepting donations meant he could continue “to do something which is really special to me, which is to go to football with my boy”.
In a separate interview with LBC, asked if he would apologise for accepting these donations, Starmer replied:
I’m not going to apologise for not doing anything wrong.
Starmer says long-term benefit claimaints should be looking for work if they can
Keir Starmer has said that he wants long-term benefit claimants to have to look for work if they can.
In an interview with the Today programme, he said:
I think the basic proposition that you should look for work is right.
Obviously there will be hard cases, but the way I would do it is to say yes, that’s the basic proposition, but we also want to support that so that more people can get into work.
He also said he had studied schemes where firms support people getting back to work after a long-term illness. He said:
Quite often I think what lies behind this is a fear for someone who’s been on long-term sickness, that can they get back into the workplace? Are they going to be able to cope? Is it all going to go hopelessly wrong?
Yes they need to be back in the workplace where they can, but I do think that if we can put the right support in place, which I’ve seen pilots of, they work pretty well, and we want to see more of those across the country.
Starmer avoids backing Angela Eagle’s anti-Trump comment before potential meeting with ex-president
Keir Starmer has said he wants to meet Kamala Harris and Donald Trump before the US election. As Rowena Mason reports, Starmer also refused to back Angela Eagle, the Home Office minister who said Trump’s rhetoric was fuelling outright racism when he spoke to journalists travelling with him to New York. Here is Rowena’s story.
Keir Starmer says ‘the last government’ should apologise for ‘leaving a hole of £22bn’
Good morning. Keir Starmer is in New York, where he will be addressing the United Nations general assembly later, but the Labour party conference still has half a day to go in Liverpool. Starmer gave a series of media interviews before he left and they are playing out this morning. Speaking to Susanna Reid for ITV’s Good Morning Britain, he refused four time to apologise to pensioners for the cut in winter fuel payments. Delegates will debate the decision at the conference this morning, and they are expected to support a motion championed by the Unite union condemning the decision.
On ITV Starmer was asked if he would apologise to a pensioner like Chrissy, who has arthritis and who told the programme she was dreading winter because her fuel bills would go up by £40 a month, and she would lose the winter fuel payment. Starmer dodged the question, and instead said:
Well, I am really concerned that we’ve been put in this position. When you inherit an economy with £22bn missing, it is a really difficult set of choices.
But Reid persisted, and by question three and four, Starmer was saying it was the Tories who should apologise. He said:
The people who should be saying sorry are the last government who left a hole of £22bn, and they should be sorry for that and they should apologise for that.
I will post more from Starmer’s interviews soon.
Here is the agenda for the day.
10am: Wes Streeting, the health secretary, is speaking at the Labour conference.
10.45am: Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, is speaking at the conference.
10.55am: Liz Kendall, the work and pensions secretary, delivers her speech.
11.45am: Ellie Reeves, the Cabinet Office minister, wraps up the conference.
5pm (UK time): Keir Starmer is due to speak at the UN security council.
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