Health Secretary Wes Streeting has called on doctors’ union leaders to work with the government on its plans to transform the NHS and end the bickering over strikes over pay.
Streeting said a damning report on Thursday by peer Ara Darzi made it clear that the “status quo of managed decline is not an option, and neither is simply pumping ever-increasing amounts of taxpayers’ money into a broken model”.
He told the British Medical Association (BMA) GP committee that backing industrial action against budget cuts would be harmful to patients.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Streeting said the threat of industrial action would “harm patients and put more burden on their colleagues in other parts of the NHS”. He added: “I think GPs want to work with this government. They see the seriousness of our intentions … they want, as we do, to repair the relationship with the GP. I urge the BMA to work with us on that and stop the slashing.”
Earlier, Oxford University Professor of Medicine John Bell said the BMA was “a major barrier to health reform”. He said: “When you think about eggs that you have to break, I fear that the stranglehold that the medical profession generally has on the way we run a health system needs to be broken.
“I think the medical profession is stuck in a certain way of life and a way of practicing medicine, but they are very conservative and it is very difficult to move them to another place.”
Asked about those comments, Streeting said: “I don’t see any resistance in the NHS. People are crying out for change and I’ve had some good conversations with the BMA about reform. And I think there’s a real opportunity, now that the junior doctors dispute has been resolved, to restore that sense of professional partnership.”
But he added: “Despite investing £100 million in the first six weeks of this government to tackle GP unemployment and our determination to grow primary care in general practice as a share of NHS budgets, we are still seeing saber rattling – the unnecessary threat of industrial action.”
Streeting said: “The NHS will go bust if we don’t flatten the curve of cost and demand in the long term”. But he ruled out sugar and salt taxes to pay for upgrades. Speaking to LBC, he said: “That wasn’t in our manifesto. And the reason we’re reluctant to go down that kind of path is because there’s a cost of living crisis at the moment. Crucially, in terms of public health and prevention measures. We need to take people with us.”
Asked about the timescales for transforming the NHS, Streeting told BBC Breakfast: “I’m going to do everything I can to get the NHS back to what are known as the constitutional norms, the targets it sets itself, within the five-year period that we’ve committed to, and to ensure that by the end of this parliament we see millions of waiting lists lower than they are now.”
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Speaking to Times Radio, he said: “I think people know that it took over a decade to break the NHS and it will take time to get the NHS back on its feet and make sure it’s fit for the future. Because we’re not investing in the capital and technology, day-to-day spending spirals out of control and the capital and technology budgets are being plundered to plug the holes in day-to-day spending, and the cycle repeats itself.
“In reviewing spending, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and I are determined to break that cycle by really focusing on the capital investments and the technology investments that will help us reduce the spiraling costs of day-to-day spending and improve the productivity of the system.”