‘Middle-class leftists’ won’t stop Labor from using the private sector to tackle the NHS backlog, says Streeting
“Middle-class leftists” will not stop a Labor government from using private hospitals to tackle the NHS’s huge care backlog, the party’s shadow health secretary has promised.
Wes Streeting rejected the idea that paying private healthcare providers to treat patients amounted to a ‘betrayal’ of the NHS and insisted that faster treatment was more important than ideology.
He used an opinion column in the Sun newspaper on Monday to make clear that a Labor government would continue the Conservatives’ policy of using health care money to pay private hospitals to treat as many of the millions waiting for NHS care as possible .
Outlining his party’s plans to revive the NHS, he said: “We will also use spare capacity in the private sector to reduce waiting lists.
“Middle-class leftists cry ‘treason’. The real betrayal is the two-tiered system that ensures people like them get treatment faster – while working families like mine have to wait longer.”
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he added: “Those who can afford, pay to go private, will be seen more quickly and their outcomes, their life chances and their quality of life will be better.
“Those who cannot afford it are left behind. These are mostly working class people like mine. I think that’s a shame.
“That’s why, as the howls of outrage pour in… I take it like water off a duck’s back. I don’t think I could look someone in the eye who has been waiting in pain and agony for months and months, sometimes more than a year, for treatment. I couldn’t look them in the eye and tell them to wait longer because my principles trump their timely access to care.”
Campaign group Keep Our NHS Public criticized Streeting, saying his comments were an insult to those who wanted the NHS to provide all its own care.
“Streeting’s derogatory and dismissive comments aimed at senior healthcare professionals and experts advocating for a fully public system are frankly an insult,” said Tony O’Sullivan, co-chair of the group and a retired NHS consultant paediatrician.
“This is not an ideological argument, but a pragmatic argument. Private healthcare requires both staff and resources from the NHS, and is more expensive for the taxpayer.
“It makes no sense to prioritize a private system while underfunding a public system whose model was previously independently ranked as the best in the world.”
Streeting has raised suspicion among some Labor MPs, health unions and NHS campaigners over his embrace of private healthcare as a way to tackle the backlog. which amounts to 7.6 million treatments in England alone.
Last year he told LBC that the NHS would be privatized and patients would be accused of using it “over my dead body”. The two-tiered system between those who can and cannot afford to go private was “unconscionable and immoral,” he added.
“If there is spare capacity at the hospital down the road, we will use NHS funds to buy that capacity and give it to people for free at the point of use,” he said.