Government has already started work to fix ‘broken’ NHS, says PM

The newly elected Labour government has already begun work to fix the “broken” NHS, Sir Keir Starmer has said.

The Prime Minister told reporters at a Downing Street press conference that “raw honesty” about the state of the health service was “difficult” for those working in the NHS to hear, but that honesty was necessary to fix the situation.

He added that work to deliver the 40,000 extra NHS appointments a week promised “will start immediately”.

Asked on Saturday whether he was happy with the work of NHS England chief executive Amanda Pritchard and whether he intended to keep her, Sir Keir replied: “That is not aimed at the NHS chief executive, it is a reflection of the failure of the previous government, but an honest statement about the state of the NHS because we will not fix it if we are not honest.

“That’s a difficult thing to hear if you work in the NHS. Obviously my wife works in the NHS, as I may have mentioned, but it’s difficult because if you work in the NHS, you put in a huge amount of effort in difficult circumstances. It’s relentless.

“But you know, we have to be honest about this. It’s broken and our job now is not just to say who broke it, the previous government, but to get down to work and start fixing it, which is what we’re going to do, and (Health Minister) Wes Streeting has already started that work.”

Asked when he would be able to commit to launching 40,000 additional jobs, the prime minister said work on this would “start immediately”.

He added that St Thomas’ Hospital in Westminster and other hospitals around the country, including Leeds, had already introduced these extra appointments “of their own accord” by introducing programmes of working in the evenings and at weekends.

“We’ve talked to them about how they’ve done it… They’re going to different places around the country to help implement this model in other hospitals as quickly as possible,” he said.

“So I can’t say whether it will be done by day X, but we’ve had some conversations about how it will be implemented from day one.”

Although the NHS has faced its own challenges in recent years, research shows that most people in the UK still believe in the service’s founding principles.

The latest public attitudes survey found that 82% of respondents believe the NHS should be available to all, 91% think it should be free and 82% think it should be funded primarily from taxation.