How radical will Wes Streeting’s NHS reforms be?

Wes Streeting has spent years talking about NHS reform – but he’s always had a red line on ‘free at the point of use’. At the start of the year the Health Secretary suggested he’d rather ‘die in a ditch’ before giving up on this principle. But is something about to give?

Asked today at the Tony Blair Institute’s conference if the UK needed to keep ‘free at the point of use throughout the NHS’ – or if some kind of top-up system could be considered for those who can afford it – Streeting did not give his usual, straightforward answer. Instead, he seemed to create a new definition for the concept.

‘Free at the point of use is about fairness and equity,’ he said. ‘And defending a system that means when you fall ill, you do not need to worry about the bill.