‘We’ve done exactly what we said we would do’ – Health Secretary

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: One major crisis facing the country that was notably absent from the King’s Speech was social care, despite its impact on the NHS. But there were two big health announcements. We spoke to Health Secretary Wes Streeting.

Wes Streeting: I’m so proud that in the first King’s Speech of the new Labour government we’ve done exactly what we said we would do, which is introduce the mental health bill. And that is just one measure we’ll be taking, alongside putting mental health support in every primary and secondary school in the country, working mental health support in every community, and 8,500 more staff to cut mental health waiting lists.

Victoria Macdonald: I suppose it still doesn’t quite answer the question, because we on Channel 4 News have been doing a lot of pieces, for instance, about people with autism and learning disabilities who have been inappropriately placed in mental health hospitals. I spoke to one this morning, Nicholas Thornton. He said: ‘When am I going to get out of here?’

Wes Streeting: I think, to be fair to Channel 4, you’ve done great campaigning on this, really bringing those stories to public life. There are far too many people in our country with conditions like autism who are being detained and their liberty deprived entirely unnecessarily. We’ve got to make sure they are cared for in the community. We’ve got to recognise the enormous inequalities here. But the fact this is in the first King’s Speech, I hope, will reassure people who are being unnecessarily detained, and their families, that this is a real priority for Keir Starmer’s government.

Victoria Macdonald: The King’s Speech doesn’t have that much about health in it. We see the smoking and vaping bill, the mental health bill. But of course, that says nothing to the elderly person on a trolley in a corridor waiting for a bed. There is no mention of what’s going to happen about the state of the NHS. Again, and I know you’ve been asked this ad nauseam, but there was nothing about social care.

Wes Streeting: Lots of the things that we need to do with our NHS don’t require new laws at all. We can just get on with the job. And that’s why, in my first week and a half, as the secretary of state for health and social care, I rang the junior doctors on day one, got them in week one, and they’re going to be here in the Department of Health again this week with a view to getting negotiations up and running. We’ve managed to get people around the table from the NHS and government working together to look at how we hit the ground running with those 40,000 more appointments every week. We promise to cut waiting lists. We know that change will take time and I think to be fair to the voters, they got that message at the election too.

Victoria Macdonald: But you are still the social care secretary and it is noticeable how little is being said about that.

Wes Streeting: On social care, myself and the deputy prime minister, herself a former care worker, are already getting to work looking at how we can negotiate and deliver the first ever fair pay agreements in our country so that we can recruit and retain the care workers, the care professionals that we need. We’ve also started looking with NHS and social care leaders at what we can do to improve delayed discharges, more integrated services so that we can start really getting people out of hospital back home much sooner, better for them.

Victoria Macdonald: Can I just ask you one more question, and it’s on prevention. There is the smoking and vaping bill. How confident are you that this is going to get through in this parliament?

Wes Streeting: It was both interesting and important today that Rishi Sunak, now as leader of the opposition, indicated his support for Labour’s tobacco and vaping bill. We’ll look forward to working again as constructively as we can across the party divide.

Victoria Macdonald: There will be support across your party for this?

Wes Streeting: Absolutely. We’ve got the numbers on our side, and I’m sure we’ll have support from some of the other opposition parties too.