Wes Streeting has called on the British Medical Association to be "friends, not foes" to help fix a broken NHS under the looming threat of tight budgets and the popularity of the Reform Party. The Health Secretary made the appeal during a special meeting of the BMA's representative body.
Doctors told the organisation of their concerns that the Government's 10-Year Health Plan for England may result in poorer standards of care for patients. Streeting said Labour's first year in power should be seen as a "willingness to rebuild the relationship between doctors and Government that should be grounds for optimism".
He said: "The Government has changed. The attitude to the NHS and its staff has changed. I need the approach of the BMA to change too."
Call for partnership
Streeting emphasised the need for collaboration, stating: "Rescuing the NHS from the biggest crisis in its history is a team effort and it will only happen if we are on the same side, working together." He added: "I can't do this alone. I need partners, not adversaries."
The Health Secretary said: "I am in this job to fight for patients every day just like you, and just like you I am in this job to save the NHS every day. If we join forces, it's a fight we can win. If we are pitted against each other, the whole country loses."
Streeting said he is trying to "rebuild a relationship that was broken under my predecessors", adding: "If I'm honest, I'm still waiting for the BMA to take the olive branch."
Warning about political threats
He told the meeting: "It's not that you're fighting the last war - it's that you're fighting the last enemy. The Conservatives curbed your pay - we're raising it. The Conservatives created training bottlenecks - we're tackling them."
Warning that now is the time to reform or die for the NHS, he said: "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."
Reform plans and concerns
The 10-year plan is intended to deliver fundamental changes to the way health services are structured, funded, and delivered. Among the reforms are moving care from hospitals to communities, transitioning from analogue to digital systems including expansion of the NHS App, and concentrating on preventing ill health.
Earlier Dr Tom Dolphin, the BMA chairman of council, told the meeting morale is low among the workforce and "waits for hospital appointments are too often measured in years, not days and weeks". He said: "We are not just doctors. We are patients, relatives, and carers too. And neither as doctors, nor as patients, are we opposed to, or indifferent to reform."
Streeting warned that failure could lead to continued strikes, slower investment in new technology, and ultimately a Reform government that "has openly said it will replace the NHS with an insurance-based system". He said: "That's the consequence if we fail - that's the stakes that I'm dealing in."
Sources used: "PA Media" Note: This article has been edited with the help of Artificial Intelligence.
