Build an NHS fit for the future

How Labour will build an NHS fit for the future:

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• Cut NHS waiting times with 40,000 more appointments every week

• Double the number of cancer scanners

• A new Dentistry Rescue Plan

• 8,500 additional mental health staff

• Return of the family doctor

 

The 1945 Labour government founded our National Health Service on principles that have stood the test of time:The best health services should be available, free for all. Money should no longer be the passport to the best treatment. People should get the best that modern science can offer.For decades the NHS has served us well, with those values enduring. These are the principles which will underpin the next Labour government’s plan to reform the NHS.But as we look at the NHS now, it is clearly broken – and the Conservatives broke it. Whilst the Covid-19 pandemic placed the NHS under unprecedented stress, the reality is waiting lists were at record highs even before it struck. Rather than healthcare being ‘free for all’, we now find ourselves with a de facto two-tier system – with working people regularly forced to scrape together the means to go private. Meanwhile, over the past 14 years, the ‘winter crisis’ cycle has become part of the national calendar. Every year, a new crisis is declared. Then, every year, the Conservatives reach for a sticking plaster patch-up to get through the winter, without ever addressing the root cause.This is a situation Labour is familiar with: we have saved the NHS before, and the next Labour Government will do so again. With Labour, it will always be publicly owned and publicly funded. But our ambition goes beyond returning the NHS to what it was. Labour’s mission is to build an NHS fit for the future. Investment alone won’t be enough to tackle the problems facing the NHS; it must go hand in hand with fundamental reform.We must change the NHS so that it becomes not just a sickness service, but able to prevent ill health in the first place. It must also reflect the change in the nature of disease, with a greater focus on the management of chronic, long-term conditions. And we will deliver a renewed drive to tackle the biggest killers; cutting the lives lost to cancer, cardiovascular disease and suicide, while ensuring people live well for longer.Labour’s reforms will shift our NHS away from a model geared towards late diagnosis and treatment, to a model where more services are delivered in local communities. We will harness the power of technologies like AI to transform the speed and accuracy of diagnostic services, saving potentially thousands of lives. And we will embed a greater focus on prevention throughout the entire healthcare system and supporting services. As we knew in 1945, much avoidable ill health can be prevented.The factor that is markedly different from the past decades is our understanding of mental health. Across society, mental health has stepped out of the shadows, yet it is difficult to argue the NHS has kept up. Indeed, Britain is currently suffering from a mental health epidemic that is paralysing lives, particularly those of children and young people. This is a tragedy – arguably nothing says more about the state of a nation than the wellbeing of its children. So right at the core of our mission will be a bold new ambition to raise the healthiest generation of children in our history. And, as a crucial part of that, we will reform the NHS to ensure we give mental health the same attention and focus as physical health.