Following the culmination of the general election and the dust settling on prime minister Sir Keir Starmer’s new cabinet, the major stakeholders within the NHS have been busy outlining how new health secretary Wes Streeting should begin this parliament.
NHS Providers’ CEO, Sir Julian Hartley, highlights ending the junior doctor disputes, funding the NHS pay awards, and fully implementing the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan as primary issues for the new health secretary.
The NHS Confederation warns that Streeting will also need to stop GPs taking ‘collective action' over contract changes — the NHS Confederation says the 1.9% uplift “falls short of what is needed”.
Short-term stabilisation work will take precedent in the immediate instance over long-term transformation goals, according to Matthew Taylor, the NHS Confederation’s CEO. The organisation has previously emphasised the areas of importance for the next government.
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) is calling on the new government to keep their word and repeal legislation the restricts the right to strike and launch a sector-wide investigation into social care exploitation.
This is in addition to the forced reporting of corridor care, so the true extent of pressures are known and conditions are not hidden.
Meanwhile, in primary care, the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) is urging Streeting to make the sector a “day one priority”.
The RCGP warned before the election that over three-quarters of GPs believe their excessive workload is compromising patient safety — the RCN said something similar in nursing. Recruitment and retention funding has been outlined as part of the solution for both GPs and nurses.
At the same time, the Royal College of Physicians says that “too many doctors currently feel tired, undervalued and burned out.” A comprehensive retention strategy is needed; as is a review of the projections of growth for the physician associate workforce.
The Health Foundation outlines that Streeting must enact social care reforms and urges him to set out a clear timetable for the delivery of this. The think tank projected just before the election that the NHS is set for a massive £38bn funding hole by the end of this parliament.
In his first speech as health secretary, Wes Streeting spoke of a broken NHS that needs fixing. He also confirmed that negotiations with the British Medical Association’s (BMA) junior doctors committee will begin this week.
Junior doctors from the Welsh branch of the BMA overwhelmingly approved the government’s offer to them just before the election
“It will take time — we never pretended that the NHS could be fixed overnight,” he said.
“And it will take a team effort. It will be the mission of my department, every member of this government, and the 1.4 million people who work in the NHS, to turn our health service around.”
Read how the next government must prevent a ‘one step forward, two step back’ situation for brain cancer patients in a National Health Executive exclusive from Dr Nicky Huskens, the CEO at the Tessa Jowell Brain Cancer Mission.
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