This is a ten-year plan, says Labour health minister

Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government has made a lot of noise about the perilous state of the NHS, insisting the institution must ‘reform or die’. But while the rhetoric is right, what does Labour actually plan to do about it? There are ‘three shifts’, health minister Stephen Kinnock told Isabel Hardman at The Spectator’s ‘How to fix a broken NHS’ audience today: a change of focus from hospital care to a more community-centred approach, a move from a paper-based, analogue-style practice to better use of AI and digital technology, and a transition from dealing with sickness to emphasising prevention.

But it’s not just the NHS that has to adapt and modernise: other facets of Britain’s healthcare system require change. Today’s conversation gave an insight into the ongoing challenges faced by the UK’s social care system – which, in not functioning effectively, adds to the issue of delayed hospital discharge. Kinnock described the social care crisis as ‘urgent’, adding that without improvements here ‘we can’t really fix the NHS’.