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The NHS must make three “major changes” to the way it delivers care to ensure a sustainable future, according to Wes Streeting.
Speaking at the Financial Times Weekend festival in London on Saturday, the UK health and social care secretary said the new government would prioritise moving NHS care “from hospital to community”, “analogue to digital” and “disease to prevention”.
The three shifts are “absolutely essential and in fact existential… for the future of the NHS,” Streeting said.
“We need to bring the best of the NHS to the rest of the NHS,” he said, noting that collaboration between the health and life sciences sectors was happening but only “in exceptional circumstances”.
People are “living longer but… not living well longer”, adding that the NHS needs to modernise, “diagnose earlier and treat faster”.
He said a greater focus on prevention and primary care would help ease the burden on overburdened hospitals and “push health problems and comorbidities… into later retirement.”
An analysis published in the Lancet Health Longevity this year found that, taking England as an example, more than 70,000 extra “quality-adjusted life years” could be gained over about 20 years by taking action to reduce dementia risk factors such as vision loss and high cholesterol.
England's NHS is facing long waiting lists for routine care, made worse by the cancellation of around 1.5 million appointments and operations due to a wave of strikes and an ageing population.
There were 100,658 vacancies in secondary care as of March, according to the British Medical Association, the main medical union.
Streeting, echoing his first official statement as health secretary, said the health system was “broken but not defeated” and argued that “good social care” was needed to achieve “the kind of recovery we want to see” in the NHS.
Social care was barely mentioned during the general election campaign, despite millions of people suffering from increasingly poor provision for older and disabled people in England.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer inherited Conservative government plans to cap the amount people contribute to their own care costs, but England’s biggest councils warned in July of a £30bn “black hole” in funding the proposals. Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced in late July that it would not go ahead, saving £1bn from what it would have cost in 2025-26.
Streeting said that while “action on social care needs to be taken now”, longer-term issues also needed to be addressed, including those related to more complex care needs and an ageing population.
“Give us time,” he said, referring to calls for the Labour government to implement its policies more quickly.
Streeting said he would work with Peter Kyle, the science and technology secretary, to “remove… institutional barriers” in the NHS and make the service “a catalyst for great, groundbreaking science being produced here in Britain”.
Asked about Reeves' decision to cut winter fuel On payments for wealthy pensioners, Streeting said: “We need to find the right balance… and invest in our public services without resorting to the tax lever every time.”