Labour has ‘hit the ground running’ on NHS reform says Streeting

We spoke to the Health Secretary Wes Streeting about the plans announced today to bring down waiting lists and the comments by Elon Musk.

Wes Streeting: The crucial thing about today’s plan, it’s been launched with the NHS in partnership with the NHS. We’ve signed up to this together and we’ve made a number of commitments together to deliver not just the investment of the budget that was very welcome, but also the reform that the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and I all promised.

Cathy Newman: You promised a ten-year plan on the NHS. So far you’ve launched a national conversation. You promised to fix social care and you’ve now launched this commission which won’t report until 2028. You’ve been, in your job as Shadow Health Secretary, before your current job, since 2021. Why didn’t you come into office with a ready made plan for both of those things? Social care and the NHS. Could have got moving quicker.

Wes Streeting: We did, and that’s why we’ve hit the ground running. We promised..

Cathy Newman: Well have you? It’s six months since you took power?

Wes Streeting: We came in, we’ve hit the ground running. Within three weeks we’d ended the junior doctor strikes with a new resident doctors deal, which means this winter, staff are on the frontline, not on the picket line. Within weeks, we came in and found the funding for an additional 1000 GPs to be employed on the frontline by this April – hundreds already recruited. The rest to follow in the coming weeks. It’s why the Chancellor put in almost £2 billion to deliver on the first step we promised, of ramping up those 40,000 more appointments, 2 million more appointments a year to cut waiting lists. People will be able to judge in July, the 1st anniversary of the Labour Government, whether or not we delivered on that pledge. But I can tell you we’ve been ramping right up to deliver it and I’m confident we’ll get there.

Cathy Newman: But Social Care, the Social Care Commission won’t report until 2028. You’re not hitting the ground running on that, are you? You could have implemented one of the other reports, many reports that have been launched before on this.

Wes Streeting: I’ll tell you why the commission’s important in just a moment. But we have hit the ground running on social care. The first hundred days we legislated for fair pay agreements, to deal with a workforce crisis. The budget delivered the biggest expansion of carer’s allowance for unpaid family carers since the 1980s..

Cathy Newman: That’s tinkering around the edges.

Wes Streeting: Tell that to family carers who are getting an extra £2,300 a year.

Cathy Newman: The NHS isn’t the one making the headlines today. Your plan isn’t grabbing the headlines. It is Elon Musk doing that. Keir Starmer talked about the lies and disinformation that are being spread on the child grooming scandal. Do you think that Elon Musk is using hate speech?

Wes Streeting: There’s been far too much focus on a guy in America who doesn’t know this country, doesn’t understand what’s going on in terms of child sexual exploitation. And I think we should just all take a step back for a moment and reflect on the fact that these are some of the most appalling, sickening crimes imaginable. We’ve got in Downing Street and in the Home Office a prime minister in Keir Starmer and a victims minister in Jess Phillips, who before they entered parliament, had given their lives to fighting violence against women and girls, who have locked up together, Jess supporting victims, Keir as a prosecutor, paedophiles, rapists and sex offenders.

Cathy Newman: You’ve talked about Keir Starmer and Jess Phillips’ efforts in this area. For their pains Elon Musk called Jess Phillips ‘an evil witch, a rape genocide apologist, who should be put in jail’. He said that Keir Starmer should be in jail. Is that hate speech?

Wes Streeting: It’s certainly an appalling smear in Jess’s case. And it is absurd in terms of what he said about the prime minister.

Cathy Newman: You said and the prime minister said that he’s crossed a line. Therefore, why don’t you do something about the fact that he’s crossed that line? And prosecute him, use the existing laws on hate speech?

Wes Streeting: Well, I’m not a lawyer and I’m not qualified to judge whether he’s broken the law or not. And to be honest, I’ve spent most of my time in recent days thinking about and, by the way, I’ll be spending a lot of my time in the coming weeks and days thinking about how I can turn the NHS around to build a social care system fit for the future.

Cathy Newman: Are you reluctant to say it’s hate speech because you’re worried about upsetting the applecart diplomatically? This is a very important member of Donald Trump’s cabinet.

Wes Streeting: No, I’m not. I’ve been pretty robust over the weekend and just now in terms of what I think about his comments.

Cathy Newman: Well, on Friday, you said you’re willing to work with Elon Musk. He’s got a big role to play. ‘If he wants to work with us. and roll his sleeves up, we welcome that.’

Wes Streeting: I people who saw that, I think it was very clear the tone in which I was saying, ‘Look, it’s all very well taking to Twitter. If you actually want to do something about victims of child sexual exploitation and abuse, clean up your own platform.’

Cathy Newman: You’re willing to work with him to do that still are you?

Wes Streeting: There are things that social media companies can and should be doing and in some cases are doing to clean up the Internet. There’s more to be done. But closer to home, we’re focused on victims and delivering justice for victims and protecting and preventing future victims.

Cathy Newman: One final one, on that very point, because Keir Starmer himself says that too many victims were let down in the grooming scandal. Did previous Labour governments, Labour councillors help foster that climate of political correctness, concerned about political correctness, and that prevented the perpetrators being brought to justice swiftly, that climate? Would you accept there was..

Wes Streeting: There was definitely a problem which actually Louise Casey, when she did, I think the Rotherham inquiry, exposed that there was a climate in which people were afraid to speak up for fear of being accused of being racist – and were afraid to speak up or act because of fear of upsetting community cohesion. And the Prime Minister was absolutely unequivocal this morning, that is a warped view of community cohesion that he has got no time for and this government has got no time for.

Cathy Newman: But previous Labour government’s did foster that.

Wes Streeting: But there’s no doubt that under successive Labour, Conservative governments and Labour and Conservative administrations at every level of the country, that victims were let down. There is no doubt about that. If there’s one thing that we can do now, to try and correct past wrongs and injustices, it’s to deliver justice for those victims and to demonstrate through action that we are doing everything we can to make sure that we don’t see a repeat of those sorts of heinous, sickening crimes.