‘Friends, not foes’ needed to help fix broken NHS, Streeting tells BMA

Wes Streeting has called on the British Medical Association to be “friends, not foes” to help fix a broken NHS under the looming threat of tight budgets and the popularity of the Reform Party.

The Health Secretary was speaking at a special meeting of the BMA’s representative body as doctors told the organisation of their concerns that the Government’s 10-Year Health Plan for England may result in poorer standards of care for patients.

Mr Streeting said Labour’s first year in power – which has seen talks over pay and conditions for NHS staff and doctors – should be seen as a “willingness to rebuild the relationship between doctors and Government that should be grounds for optimism”.

He said: “The Government has changed. The attitude to the NHS and its staff has changed. I need the approach of the BMA to change too.

“Rescuing the NHS from the biggest crisis in its history is a team effort and it will only happen if we are on the same side, working together.

“I can’t do this alone. I need partners, not adversaries.

“I am in this job to fight for patients every day just like you, and just like you I am in this job to save the NHS every day.

“If we join forces, it’s a fight we can win. If we are pitted against each other, the whole country loses.”

He added: “When I said the NHS was broken I did not just mean for patients. I am clear that the future depends on building a health service that values you, invests in you, and supports you. We can only do that as friends, not foes.”

Mr Streeting said he is trying to “rebuild a relationship that was broken under my predecessors”, adding: “If I’m honest, I’m still waiting for the BMA to take the olive branch.”

He told the meeting: “It’s not that you’re fighting the last war – it’s that you’re fighting the last enemy.

“The Conservatives curbed your pay – we’re raising it.

“The Conservatives created training bottlenecks – we’re tackling them.

“The Conservatives took the NHS to the worst crisis in its history – we’re putting it back on the road to recovery.

“I’ve got to say, and surely you must see this, there isn’t a more pro-NHS, pro-union, pro-doctor health secretary waiting in the wings.”

Warning that now is the time to reform or die for the NHS, he said: “If we fail and Nigel Farage (Reform UK leader) gets his hands on it, then it is Reform and die.

“I don’t know about you, but I do not want that on my conscience.”

The 10-year plan is intended to deliver fundamental changes to the way health services are structured, funded, and delivered.

Among the range of reforms and policies are moving care from hospitals to communities, including focusing on providing more care outside of hospitals, with an emphasis on the development of neighbourhood health centres.

There is also a call to move from analogue to digital, including a major expansion of the NHS App and greater use of AI and other technology, as well as a call to also concentrate on preventing ill health.

Earlier Dr Tom Dolphin, the BMA chairman of council, told the meeting morale is low among the workforce, patient confidence needs to be rebuilt, “waits for hospital appointments are too often measured in years, not days and weeks”, and there is a need to fix a disjointed NHS.

He said: “We are not just doctors. We are patients, relatives, and carers too. And neither as doctors, nor as patients, are we opposed to, or indifferent to reform.”

Mr Streeting suggested the plan could be a step towards every shift worked in the NHS potentially having a “sense of achievement”.

He warned: “The alternative is strikes continue to hold back the NHS’s recovery, the costs of industrial action slow down investment in new technology, equipment and additional specialty places, the changes that we will agree need to be made are locked, and patients continue to be failed.

“From there, the public will conclude that Labour has failed on the NHS and they will elect a Reform government instead – a party that has openly said it will replace the NHS with an insurance-based system.

“That’s the consequence if we fail – that’s the stakes that I’m dealing in.”

A survey with responses from 2,874 grass roots doctors in England about the 10-year plan reveals some of the “doctors’ deep concerns” about its impact on their patients and their profession, the BMA said.

Some 77% of GPs who responded to the survey felt proposals in the plan could damage the continuity of patient care and over 80% said it would decrease the independence of general practice.

Many doctors also do not believe they can provide similar levels of treatment in the planned neighbourhood health hubs.

Dr Dolphin says clarity is needed on about how the hubs will work, particularly  as there are so many vacancies in the NHS.

He added the Government “will need to explain how fewer staff will be able to deliver more care through Neighbourhood Health Centres, open 24 hours a day, six days per week”.