Wes Streeting tore into the Tories’ plan to bolster the NHS this winter, saying it was “time for the next episode”.
The Labour MP quoted American rapper Dr. Dre at the new health secretary Therese Coffey after she unveiled her plan for the health service.
The joke was in reference to a recent interview in which Coffey’s phone had gone off with a Dr. Dre ringtone.
Coffey had been detailing the government’s plan to ensure no patient has to wait more than two weeks to see a GP.
Her plan is focused on what she has dubbed the “ABCD” of ambulances, backlogs, care and doctors and dentists.
But the shadow health secretary told Coffey she had a “Sesame Street” plan for the NHS and questioned how they will make it easier for patients to see a doctor.
Streeting told the Commons: “The Conservatives promising to fix the crisis in the NHS is like the arsonist promising to put out the fire they started. If that wasn’t bad enough, the supermassive blackhole part of her plan is a lack of a workforce strategy.
“She has no plans to provide the doctors that our NHS so desperately needs and despite her Sesame Street approach to politics with her ABCD plan – by the way, last time I checked ‘S’ was for social care, she’s missed the ‘N’ for nurses – without a plan to tackle the staffing crisis, I say to the secretary of state: you don’t have a plan for the NHS.”
Streeting closed his speech, saying: “As Dr Dre might say: time for the next episode.”
Coffey also faced criticism from one of her predecessors, Tory MP Jeremy Hunt, who said they should “rethink” the two-week access target.
He told MPs: “It is not more targets the NHS needs, it is more doctors.”
Coffey said the scale of the challenges facing the health service “necessitates a national endeavour”.
Outlining her plans, she said: “Patients are my top priority and I will be their champion, focusing on the issues that most affect them or their loved ones.”
The plan includes asking for one million volunteers who stepped up during the pandemic to support the NHS.
The government’s plans also include changing funding rules to recruit extra support staff so GPs can focus on treating patients.
They will also improve the phone system to make it easier for patients to contact their GP surgeries and publish appointments data at a practice level.
Pharmacies will be asked to help ease pressures on GPs by supplying more medicines such as contraception without a prescription.