Wes Streeting vowed to fix ‘broken’ NHS but critics say he failed to deliver

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NHS experts and MPs say he ‘told a good story’ as health secretary while kicking the difficult cans down the road

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Wes Streeting’s 22 months in office was characterised by relentless media interviews, newspaper editorials and Department of Health and Social Care press releases. They portrayed a dynamic health secretary who was clearing up the mess he inherited in the NHS, pushing ahead with radical changes and making progress on what matters most to patients – accessing care when they need it.

Having initially declared the NHS “broken” – by the Conservatives – it is six months since he first declared that the health service was now, on his watch, “on the road to recovery” – a claim he has made regularly since. He included the gist of it again – a sort of greatest hits collection – in his resignation letter to Keir Starmer at lunchtime on Thursday.

The NHS’s target for reducing patients’ waits for planned hospital treatment in England? “Surpassed … the biggest monthly drop outside of Covid since 2008 … We are on track to achieve the fastest improvement in NHS waiting times in history.” Ambulance response times for strokes and heart attacks? “Now the fastest in five years.” A&E waiting times? “Improving, with four-hour waiting figures also the best in five years.” And so on.

It was a highly selective reflection of his record. There was no mention of the other NHS waiting times that remain miles off-target, notably for urgent cancer treatment, or the many reviews he commissioned into problems in the NHS that have been hiding in plain sight for years – including maternity care and demand for mental health care – not to mention yet another inquiry into how to fix social care, which will not report until 2028. All difficult cans being kicked down the road, and exercises in buying time, critics said. After 22 months, we were no wiser as to what Streeting thought – or planned to do about any of these well-known and urgent challenges.

Sarah Woolnough, the chief executive of the King’s Fund thinktank, said: “Streeting’s been full of energy – a passionate health secretary in a hurry. I can’t move for the policy documents, frameworks and strategies that have come out of the Department of Health and Social Care [under Streeting]. But I worry that while there’s been a lot of policy, much of it good policy, has there been the same energy and focus on implementing the government’s 10-year health plan? The answer is no.”

A former NHS executive remains amazed by how unprepared Streeting was for turning his always-quotable rhetoric about fixing the NHS into reality. They said: “Despite being shadow health secretary before the 2024 election, he had absolutely no detailed plan for transforming the NHS and social care, both of which were in crisis and in desperate need of fundamental change. That was deeply frustrating and very worrying.

“He will be remembered in the NHS as someone who told a good story, who was a good communicator, but the substance of his record will be shown to be wanting, because he didn’t actually deliver the change that was needed.”

One NHS hospital trust chief executive’s verdict was more blunt: “Wes talked a lot … but not effective.” Where progress was made, “it’s [NHS England chief executive] Jim Mackey that’s done all the heavy lifting”, they added.

A fellow Labour MP, who has worked in the NHS, is even more critical. “From shouting about dismantling NHS England, to stripping patients off waiting lists to covertly reduce the appearance of waiting times, nothing’s ever been quite what it seemed with Wes as health secretary.

“He’s been more interested in chasing headlines and entering fights with doctors and the NHS workforce than improving patient healthcare and outcomes. Ask 100 people today if the NHS is more accessible than two years ago and they’ll all tell you ‘no’.”

Siva Anandaciva, the King’s Fund director of policy, said Streeting “was faced with a stagnating economy, a health system still recovering from Covid-19, rolling waves of industrial action and a febrile environment – a bad hand to be dealt”.

Streeting can point to the passage of the Tobacco and Vapes Act, a ban on advertising junk food on TV before the 9pm watershed and the publication last year of an ambitious 10-year health plan based on the NHS undertaking “three big shifts” in how it works. The plan did not include a chapter on how it would all be done. These are achievements, alongside progress on cutting the NHS’s huge backlog – which has 517,000 fewer people on it than under the last government – though questions surround how many of those have disappeared as a result of NHS trusts being paid to “clean up” their waiting lists.

After ruling out any reorganisation of the NHS, Streeting nevertheless embarked on one that will abolish NHS England, make thousands of staff roles redundant and cost billions. “An unnecessary and mad distraction from the real task of fixing the NHS and social care,” said one NHS insider.

Streeting often said he would happily do no other job in government than revive the NHS as health secretary. But, as Anandaciva says, he “hasn’t stuck around long enough to fix it.

“And so, like much of the 10-year health plan he published, the story of Wes Streeting’s tenure as health and social care is ultimately missing something – the chapter on delivery was started, but not completed.”

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