The NHS needs boldness – and blunt truths – to truly reform

Editorial: Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, has been brave enough to speak some blunt truths about what to many is close to a national religion

On the NHS, the Labour Party needs boldness, and Streeting is the right person to offer it (PA Wire)

It has come as a welcome relief that the Labour Party, which is proud of having founded the National Health Service, can now say out loud: “The NHS is not the envy of the world.”

It never was, despite the idealistic power of its founding principle, and despite having enjoyed an all-too-brief period of rude health around the time of the end of the last Labour government.

It is one of the achievements of Wes Streeting, the youthful and iconoclastic shadow health secretary, that he has been brave enough to speak some blunt truths about what to many is close to a national religion.

He continued to push the boundaries of what used to be considered acceptable in his exclusive interview with The Independent this weekend. It is this kind of plain speaking and clear thinking that persuades us he could be one of the most important members of the next Labour government, if that is what the British people decide on 4 July.

He told David Maddox, the political editor of The Independent, that he will be “a shop steward for patients” if he is health secretary. This is a welcome warning to striking doctors that he will not meet their pay demands in full, because a new government would have to strike a balance between the interests of patients, NHS staff and the nation as a whole.

The contrast between Mr Streeting’s position and that of the Labour Party at the last election, which was described as “wandering around the battlefield looking for interest groups to say yes to”, is stark, and encouraging.

No one doubts that settling the dispute with the junior doctors will be difficult, but there are reasons for thinking that Mr Streeting stands a better chance than the succession of recent Conservative health secretaries. Not just because he has shown a creative and persuasive cast of mind, but because the doctors know that the NHS is more likely, over time, to have more resources under a Labour government than a Conservative one.

There are, however, wider reasons for thinking that Mr Streeting could make a good health secretary. The problems of the NHS are not only a matter of resources – according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, health spending in Britain, as a share of national income, is above the western European average. Yet waiting lists and health outcomes are better in most comparable countries.

That is why Mr Streeting’s willingness to engage in heretical thinking could be so important. In his interview with The Independent, he defended his plan to use private-sector capacity to tackle NHS backlogs: “If you’re saying to me, we shouldn’t use spare capacity in the private sector to bring down NHS waiting lists, what you’re basically saying is that working-class people who can’t afford to pay for those appointments should be waiting longer because of your principles.”

This is the kind of fresh thinking that the NHS desperately needs.

Most of Labour’s programme for government is, rightly, cautious and incremental. In difficult times, with straitened public finances, the party is wisely entering the election campaign by playing down expectations of radical change. This has even prompted Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves to proclaim the ludicrous slogan that “stability is change”.

But on the NHS, the party needs boldness, and Mr Streeting is the right person to offer it.