- Author, Maria Zaccaro
- Role, BBC News
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The Prime Minister said work would begin “immediately” to fix the NHS after Labour won the general election.
Sir Keir Starmer told a news conference on Saturday that the party had spoken to two NHS trusts to discuss how the party can deliver on its election promise of 40,000 extra appointments.
Responding to new Health Secretary Wes Streeting describing the NHS as “broken”, Sir Keir refused to pin the blame on NHS England chief executive Amanda Pritchard, saying the Tories’ “failure of leadership” was to blame.
The announcement comes after Mr Streeting said he had spoken to the British Medical Association (BMA) on Friday ahead of new negotiations to try to end a long-running pay dispute with junior doctors.
Sir Keir said his new government would address the state of the health service with candour.
“Obviously my wife works in the NHS, as I may have mentioned, but it’s tough because if you work in the NHS you put in a huge amount of work in difficult circumstances. It’s relentless,” he said.
He said Labour was in talks with St Thomas’ Hospital in London and a hospital in Leeds to set up evening and weekend programmes to accommodate the extra appointments.
The prime minister was also outspoken in his attempt to end the junior doctors’ strike, but said he could not meet their demands.
The BMA has repeatedly called for a 35% increase, to compensate for what it sees as 15 years of below-inflation pay increases.
“We can’t afford that,” he told reporters at a news conference.
“I can’t say how those negotiations will play out, but I can say there will be a grown-up policy where we actually solve the problems and get our NHS working again,” he added.
Mr Streeting said Labour, in power for the first time in 14 years, had promised to enter into negotiations urgently “and that is what we are doing”.
“As of today, the policy of this department is that the NHS is broken,” he said.
Mr Streeting, who retained his seat by a margin of 528 votes, said the new government would be “honest” about the challenges it faced.
He added: “When we said that patients were being abandoned on a daily basis, this was not political rhetoric, but the daily reality faced by millions of people.
“Previous governments have been unwilling to admit these simple facts. But to cure a disease, you must first diagnose it.”
In its manifesto, Labour promised to deliver 40,000 more operations, tests and appointments a week in England – or two million a year – by introducing more weekend services and turning to the private sector.
He said the money would come from fighting tax deals with non-domestic governments.
The BBC has contacted the Conservatives for comment.
The last strike by junior doctors in England was at the end of June, the 11th work stoppage in their long-running pay dispute.
Mr Streeting has previously said he would not comply with the BMA’s 35 per cent pay rise. However, he said there was “room for discussion” on pay, as well as negotiations on how to improve conditions for junior doctors.
Junior doctors make up almost half of the NHS medical staff. Two-thirds of them are members of the BMA.