Starmer to deliver damning verdict on how Tories left NHS and set out reform vision – UK politics live

The prime minister will deliver a speech this morning after Lord Darzi’s damning report on the NHS

In interviews this morning Wes Streeting, the health secretary, also said that new money for the NHS would be focused on primary care (GP and community services), rather than on hospitals. He was speaking in an interview on BBC Breakfast, and here are the key points.

Streeting said primary care and community services would be the “first port of call” for extra NHS spending. He explained:

We’ll be setting out our plans in the budget and the spending review, but effectively it means that when it comes to more resources for the NHS, additional resources going in, the first port of call will be primary care and community services, and social care too, because we’ve got to deal with the systemic problems in our health and care services.

Streeting said the government would deliver new hospitals promised by the last government, but more slowly than originally planned. He said:

In terms of the schemes that were on what the last government called the New Hospitals Programme, I am determined to deliver those schemes.

But I might have to do it over a longer period of time because I’ve got to make sure, firstly, the money is there, secondly that the timetables are realistic and we’ve got the supply chain, the labour and the resources that we will need, and thirdly I’ve got to balance the need for new bricks and mortar alongside the need for new technology.

He said the NHS could go bust without reform. He said:

If we don’t grasp both the immediate challenge in front of us and deal with the crisis today, but also prepare the NHS for the challenges of the future in terms of an ageing society and disease and rising costs, rather than a country with an NHS, we’re going to have an NHS with a country attached to it if we’re not careful, and more likely an NHS that goes bust.

He said he wanted to cut NHS waiting lists by “millions” by the time of the next election. He said:

I’m going hell for leather to get the NHS back to what’s known as the constitutional standards, the targets it sets for itself, over the five-year period that we committed to, and to make sure that by the end of this parliament we see waiting lists millions lower than they are today.

On top of that, there is a shortfall of £37 billion of capital investment.

These missing billions are what would have been invested if the NHS had matched peer countries’ levels of capital investment in the 2010s. That sum could have prevented the backlog maintenance, modernised technology and equipment, and paid for the 40 new hospitals that were promised but which have yet to materialise. It could have rebuilt or refurbished every GP practice in the country.

No, not in a big bang, and it’s important I say that up front for two reasons.

One is so the chancellor doesn’t have a heart attack over her breakfast this morning with me writing her spending review for her.

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