Our NHS needs more from the Labour Party

In a speech on Monday unveiling Labour’s plan to “build an NHS fit for the future”, Keir Starmer argued that: “at the next election, the NHS is on the line.” We couldn’t agree more, and it’s good that Labour have recognised this reality. But will the plans the Labour leadership have laid out be enough to pull our NHS back from the brink and restore it to good health? 

Well, there are some promising elements. The briefing document that accompanied the speech highlights an increased focus on staff numbers, a much-needed shift to prevention, and an emphasis on bettering pay and conditions within social care - a sector that’s been at the sharp end of the NHS crisis for years.

However, Labour’s plans fall dangerously short in a number of critical areas. 

Firstly, it reiterates a commitment to private sector delivery, particularly to cut waiting lists. This means the further erosion of public provision and privatisation of our healthcare services, and our taxes flowing out of the NHS to boost corporate profits. 

The plans also fail to commit the substantial additional funding on the scale that our health services desperately need. Recent analysis by the Health Foundation found that  over the decade before the pandemic, the UK spent around a fifth (18%) less on average than similar European countries on health. Our NHS would need an additional £33bn a year to even catch up with the spending seen in France and Germany.

What’s more, if a potential Labour government wants to deliver on their promise of increased staff numbers, it must heed the desperate demands of the health unions and fund restorative pay rises for frontline NHS staff who are leaving the service in record numbers because inflation has eroded their wages for a decade or more. Simply put, good intentions won’t cut it without the necessary financial backing.

And what about health technologies? Well, while the document is optimistic about AI, genomics, and other technological advancements, it’s vital to recognise that these are tools and not magic solutions. Labour failed to reference the risk posed by current eye-wateringly expensive plans to centralise our health data in the hands of US spy tech company Palantir via a giant “Federated Data Platform” (FDP), which Labour should be vocally opposing to protect patients, and avoid wasteful spending. If it goes ahead as envisaged, the FDP will be the largest single point of access to NHS patient data this country has ever seen - but the government has refused to provide answers on what it is for, how it will work and how patients can be sure that our data will remain safe and protected. Labour should be holding the Conservative to account on this issue before it moves onto other techno-visions of the future.

Worryingly the Labour has also fully embraced the Conservative government’s Life Sciences Vision, pushing to align NHS processes to meet the demands of big pharma. For more than a decade, the Conservatives have been enacting policies that serve the interests of the pharma industry. The Life Sciences Vision includes a series of steps to both reduce oversight over and increase profits of the pharmaceutical industry, without proper concern for the harm caused to patients and the NHS by this monopoly-centred model. In the wake of a pandemic which saw publicly funded and created vaccines and medicines privatised for maximum profit by the pharmaceutical industry at the cost of an effective pandemic response, Labour should be coming up with a new vision for medical innovation that better serves patients and the taxpayer.

Linked to this, there’s a glaring lack of critical analysis around the issues of high drug prices, privatisation of public research, and the current poor rates of medical innovation. These are vital issues that must be addressed, especially at a time when the government is in active talks with big pharma executives to squeeze an extra £2.5bn out of our NHS for drug costs in the renegotiation of the VPAS agreement between industry and the Department of Health.

The next General Election could be as little as one year away, and our NHS is facing the greatest crisis in its history. Whilst the Labour Party’s NHS briefing represents an improvement on the status quo, so far we have not seen plans from any party which will deliver what’s truly needed to safeguard the future of our NHS. 

It’s up to us - the people who rely on the NHS every day - to keep fighting to ensure that whoever forms the next government commits to the policies that NHS patients and staff need and deserve.