Katy Balls has narrated this article for you to listen to.
A copy of a leading article from The Spectator is stuck to the wall of Wes Streeting’s office in the Department of Health. ‘Is Wes Streeting the Hamlet of the Health Service?’ we asked in October, warning against the perils of inaction. ‘We were so riled by it we stuck it there to hold ourselves to account,’ Streeting explains. ‘We’re going further than your prescription, though. We thought it was insufficiently radical.’
The Health Secretary has certainly been busy. Over the past few months, he has unveiled a range of reforms, including abolishing NHS England. His Blairite zeal annoys some in Labour. He languishes in 21st place in LabourList’s cabinet league table of party members’ favourites. The party’s grassroots won’t be reassured by the new admirers won over by his bureaucracy-bashing. ‘Lots of my Conservative predecessors and special advisers said, “We really should have done this”,’ he says.
‘We knew we had a mountain to climb… we’ve left base camp but there’s still a long, long way to go’
On the day we visit his office, Streeting is celebrating. ‘You have arrived on an auspicious day,’ he declares. ‘Because the latest figures show that NHS waiting lists have now fallen six months in a row; that we promised to deliver two million more appointments in the first year of a Labour government [and it’s] a milestone we hit seven months early.’
This progress, however, is still far slower than the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies forecast says is necessary. And Streeting knows there is much more to do. ‘I feel confident about the direction of travel we’re on, but not complacent,’ he says. ‘We knew that we had a big mountain to climb when we came into government. We’ve left base camp behind but there is still a long, long way to go.’
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