The NHS must “reform or die” to undo the damage done to it by 14 years of Tory government, Keir Starmer will declare today.
He will issue the stark warning as a damning new report reveals how a combination of austerity and a “disastrous” shake-up introduced by the Conservatives more than a decade ago has left the health service in a “critical condition”.
The probe, by independent peer and surgeon Lord Darzi, says the health of the nation has deteriorated in the last 15 years, with more people living with multiple conditions such as diabetes and high blood pressure.
NHS waiting lists have “ballooned”, while treatment for conditions such as cancer and heart disease is worse in the UK than in other wealthy countries.
And it calls for more patients to be treated in their local communities rather than on hospital wards.
Much of the blame for the crisis is laid at the door of the Health and Social Care Act, which was brought in by the Tory-led coalition government in 2012 and led to major changes in the way the NHS is run.
In a speech coinciding with the publication of Lord Darzi’s speech, the PM will say that people are dying unnecessarily because of the NHS’s deep-rooted problems.
He will declare that only the “biggest reimagining of our NHS since its birth” will preserve it for the future.
“Take the waiting times in A&E - that’s not just a source of fear and anxiety, it’s leading to avoidable deaths,” Starmer will say.
“People’s loved ones who could have been saved. Doctors and nurses whose whole vocation is to save them - hampered from doing so. It’s devastating.”
He will say the NHS is now “at a fork in the road” and that the decisions the government needs to take now will determine whether or not it survives into the future.
Starmer will say: “What we need is the courage to deliver long-term reform - major surgery not sticking plaster solutions.
“The NHS is at a fork in the road, and we have a choice about how it should meet these rising demands.
“Raise taxes on working people to meet the ever-higher costs of aging population - or reform to secure its future.
“We know working people can’t afford to pay more, so it’s reform or die.”
Lord Darzi said: “Although I have worked in the NHS for more than 30 years, I have been shocked by what I have found during this investigation - not just in the health service but in the state of the nation’s health.
“We want to deliver high quality care for all but far too many people are waiting for too long and in too many clinical areas, quality of care has gone backwards.”
He added: “In the last 15 years, the NHS was hit by three shocks - austerity and starvation of investment, confusion caused by top-down reorganisation, and then the pandemic which came with resilience at an all-time low. Two out of three of those shocks were choices made in Westminster.
“It took more than a decade for the NHS to fall into disrepair so it’s going to take time to fix it. But we in the NHS have turned things around before, and I’m confident we will do it again.”
Shadow health secretary Victoria Atkins said: “The Labour government will be judged on its actions.
“It has stopped new hospitals from being built, scrapped our social care reforms and taken money from pensioners to fund unsustainable pay rises with no gains in productivity. They need to move from rhetoric to action.”