UK PM Starmer promises 10-year plan to fix health service: ‘reform or die’
His promise comes after a report showed there would be no more money without reform to a system found to be in critical condition
The state-run NHS has been in crisis and endured some of its toughest winters in recent years, struggling to recover from the impacts of Covid-19, long backlogs for elective procedures and industrial action.
Starmer, whose Labour Party won a landslide victory in a July election, said the NHS needed “major surgery not sticking plaster solutions” to cope with the rising costs of looking after an ageing population without hiking taxes.
“Working people can’t afford to pay more, so it’s reform or die,” Starmer said, adding he knew the changes would not be universally popular.
“Only fundamental reform and a plan for the long term can turn around the NHS and build a healthy society. That won’t be easy, it won’t be quick. It will take a 10-year plan.”
He offered few details of the plan, or when a concrete blueprint would be released.
Starmer has said the previous Conservative government “broke the NHS”, part of an inheritance he describes as one of the worst across the board from prisons to immigration.
