How Wes Streeting could cut the NHS waiting list backlog and save money too | Letters
While I welcome Labour’s pledge to close the NHS waiting list backlog within five years (report, May 28), I wish the shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting, would be a little more explicit about the proposed use of the private sector in this task. The last Labor government – which did use private provision – was able to reduce waiting lists, but the longer-term consequence was greater industrialization of private practice by NHS staff. The deliberate destruction of the NHS under the Conservatives has meant that private activities have now become much more the norm, even for patients who can barely afford them.
The next Labor government must learn from the mistakes of the Blair/Brown era, when patients on long waiting lists were in some cases seen in the private sector by the same consultants who did not have time to see them in the NHS. The NHS rewards doctors who earn extra income in the private sector by awarding contracts to the companies they work for to treat their patients. And they are paid at a significantly higher rate. The result is that we have a system that is stripping the NHS of key staff, while at the same time costing significantly more for treatment. We effectively encourage these doctors to build their NHS waiting lists.
Labour’s challenge is to get medical staff to work part-time in the private sector so they can fully commit to the NHS. It will cost money, but there is a lot being thrown at these private companies and it can be used more effectively.
David Hinchliffe
Chairman of the Commons Health Select Committee 1997-2005
You report that Labor plans to clean up NHS waiting lists by using private sector staff and increasing appointments. However, hundreds of thousands of hospital appointments are being postponed or canceled because beds are occupied by patients whose discharge is delayed due to the broken and chaotic healthcare system.
Now is the time to rethink adult social care. Successive Conservative governments have shelved plans to tackle this problem because they were too difficult or too expensive. David Camerons Dilnot CommitteeTheresa May’s ‘dementia tax’ and Boris Johnson’s health and care tax proposals have all been kicked into the long grass.
Conscientious care workers struggle to do their jobs well on a minimum wage, but the largely privatized adult social care system is fragmented and disorganized. It is clear that the country must be brought back under democratic control.
So let’s hear Keir Starmer’s plan for a national care service. It has the potential to shorten waiting lists, provide better care and ultimately save money for everyone.
Norman Edwards
Highworth, Wiltshire
Wes Streeting is right to be cautious: cutting waiting lists and reforming the NHS will take time, given the state of our public finances. But there is one thing he can do that won’t cost money but would still make a fundamental difference: restore the Secretary of State’s legal duty to provide NHS services. That duty was lifted by the coalition government’s Health and Social Act 2012.
Today we have the curious situation where the government funds the NHS, but the latter is not accountable to the former. In 2012, Andy Burnham, then shadow health secretary, said: promised to withdraw the act if Labor came to power. The party should do the same in 2024.
Fawzi Ibrahim
National Officer, Rebuild Britain