On Sunday 14 September, the British Medical Association (BMA) held an extraordinary meeting to respond to the government’s new 10-year plan for the NHS. According to the BMA, the plan – unveiled back in July – poses “potential risks to the medical profession and to patients”.
However, Labour health secretary Wes Streeting also made an appearance at the BMA’s online meeting yesterday. He threatened that further strike action would impede the NHS’ recovery – and hand control to Reform UK:
The costs of industrial action slow down investment in new technology, equipment and additional specialty places. The changes that we all agree need to be made are blocked.
From there, the public will conclude that Labour has failed on the NHS and they will elect a Reform government instead – a party that has openly said it will replace the NHS with an insurance-based system.
That’s the consequence if we fail – that’s the stakes that I’m dealing in.
As ever, there is much that Streeting is missing in his assessment.
10-year health plan
When the government unveiled its 10-year plan, it acknowledged a litany of damage done to the NHS by the previous Tory government. It stated that:
- Often, people can’t get a GP or dental appointment.
- Hospital and community care waiting lists have lengthened massively.
- NHS workers are demoralised and demotivated.
- Outcomes for “major killers” like cancer are far behind other countries.
In response, the plan called for three major shifts: from ‘hospital to community’, from ‘analogue to digital’, and from ‘sickness to prevention’. It also claimed that these shifts would be achieved “at pace” through several methods:
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through a new operating model
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by ushering in a new era of transparency
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by creating a new workforce model with staff genuinely aligned with the future direction of reform
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through a reshaped innovation strategy
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by taking a different approach to NHS finances
One centrepiece of the shift from analogue to digital, and towards greater transparency, is a focus on the creation of “single patient records”. The government claim that these would “give patients real control over a single, secure and authoritative account of their data”.
However, non-profit The Good Law Project has already revealed that US spy-tech giant Palantir is leading the race to run these UK health records. The tech firm has already faced massive criticism for its entrenched racism, ties to Israel, and work with US border agencies.
‘Friends, not foes’
As if wanting to place patient data in the hands of a third-party US company with a history of the worst kinds of unethical conduct wasn’t bad enough, now Streeting is trying to claim that NHS workers need to get on board with his plans or face responsibility for bringing in a Reform government.
The health secretary has already faced criticism for his combative attitude toward the BMA and the NHS as a whole. In spite of this, he claimed he was still waiting for doctors to “take the olive branch”. In his address at the BMA meeting, Streeting once again struck an unhelpful and patronising tone:
It is the job of trade unions to push employers and governments to go further, and I respect that. It is also my responsibility to think about how we deliver right across the NHS, for all staff and for our patients. And sometimes that does mean saying no. Sometimes it means saying not now, and sometimes it means saying, let’s work together to make sure we can get this done.
He also tried to appeal to the NHS workers’ morality in order to get them to fall in line:
If we fail and Nigel Farage (Reform UK leader) gets his hands on it, then it is Reform and die.
I don’t know about you, but I do not want that on my conscience.
A dire threat
Make no mistake – Reform UK are a dire threat to the NHS as an institution. Farage supports an insurance-based model for patient care, meaning that many would be forced to pay for their treatments. The far-right party’s election would likely be the end of our country’s health system as we know it.
However, Streeting’s thinly-veiled ultimatum isn’t the answer to Reform’s looming threat. Its a sentiment typical of Starmer’s Labour as a whole – ‘back us, not because we offer anything real, but because the other guy is worse’. And what we’ve seen time and time again is that this move just doesn’t work.
NHS workers are already long past breaking point. The BMA is not organising strikes because they enjoy them, or out of greed. Streeting, and Labour as a whole, must realise a simple truth. People cannot be threatened into backing their party simply because the alternative is too awful to consider. The support of the workers, and the voters, must be earned.
Featured image via YouTube screenshot/Sky News
This post was originally published on Canary.