Starmer and Streeting are lying about the NHS – in order to push the privatisation agenda of their big business backers?

In a speech today (September 12, 2024), prime minister Keir Starmer said the NHS must “reform or die” – which is a ridiculous thing to say because he’s in charge of the organisation that owns it; it will do whatever he tells it to.

So if it doesn’t “reform” enough, it will be Starmer’s fault – and that of his weaselly little crony Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary. He has chipped in by saying the NHS could “go bust” without reform, and this again is nonsense because as part of the government, the NHS literally cannot run out of money unless he and Starmer decide to cut it off.

But then, what can we expect from a prime minister who told the Trades Union Congress that the government has an overdraft (it doesn’t) and that government cheques will bounce if it isn’t paid off (they won’t)?

Government cheques can’t bounce and the government never has an overdraft. As prime minister and Health Secretary, Starmer and Streeting know this. They are lying to you.

The lies came in response to a report by independent peer and NHS surgeon Lord Darzi, who said the NHS was still struggling with the aftershocks of the pandemic and falling well short of its key targets for cancer, Accident & Emergency (A&E) and hospital treatment.

According to the BBC,

This was contributing to poor survival rates in cancer and heart disease, and falling rates of satisfaction.

The report said the NHS had been left chronically weakened by the policy of austerity of the 2010s and in particular a lack of investment in buildings and technology. This has left it with crumbling hospitals, fewer scanners than many other developed nations and years behind the private sector in terms of digital innovation.

This has contributed to falling levels of productivity in hospitals, with rises in staff not matched by increases in the numbers of patients being seen.

It has meant hospitals have been sucking up an ever-increasing amount of the budget, when more care should be shifted into the community.

Lord Darzi was also critical of the “disastrous” 2012 reforms introduced by the coalition government, which led to a shake-up of management structure in the NHS and acted as a distraction for the rest of the decade.

It said all this contributed to the NHS entering the pandemic in a depleted state, leading to the cancellation of more hospital treatments than any comparable country and the “ballooning” waiting list, which currently stands at 7.6 million.

Meanwhile, a surge in patients suffering several long-term illnesses, such as diabetes, high blood pressure and respiratory illness, is threatening to overwhelm the NHS alongside soaring levels of mental health problems among young people.

The report says:

• A&E is in an “awful state” – with long waits likely to be causing an additional 14,000 more deaths a year, according to the Royal College of Emergency Medicine

• the state of the NHS is not entirely due to what has happened within the health service, but also because the health of the nation has deteriorated – for example bringing a surge in long-term mental health conditions

• rising levels of illness are risking economic prosperity, with 2.8 million people unable to work because of poor health

• the UK has higher cancer mortality rates than other countries

• although hospital staff numbers have increased since the pandemic, the number of appointments and procedures hasn’t because “patients no longer flow through hospitals as they should”

• the NHS has been starved of capital investment, meaning “crumbling buildings”, mental health patients in “Victoria-era cells infested with vermin” and “parts of the NHS operating in decrepit portacabins”

In response, Starmer has said he will publish a new 10-year plan for the NHS, in which he’ll spend a greater proportion of the NHS budget on GPs, social care and “community services” than on hospitals, which he said would help alleviate pressure on the service overall.

He proposes three key areas of reform: the transition to a digital NHS, moving more care from hospitals to communities, and focusing efforts on prevention over sickness.

It all seems good – on the face of it.

But there’s a question over how these changes will happen.

The Conservatives ran the health service into the ground because they wanted to create an appetite for privatisation. At the moment, if you are faced with a long wait for a surgical procedure, the very first thing that is said to you is, “Would you like to go private?” That isn’t an accident – it’s a policy; with more people going private, a case can be made that its what the public wants, when in fact it is being served to us as a fait accompli.

And the Tories worsened public health in order to create and increase the strain on the health service. That is the reason long-term illnesses, mental illnesses and so-called “Victorian” illnesses have skyrocketed.

The question now is, will Starmer and Streeting actually bring in private health companies to fix the problems that the Tories caused in order to bring them in – in other words, will they finish the Tories’ job for them?

They have certainly been paid enough in donations from private health moguls.

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