NHS will die under Reform unless doctors stop striking and work with Labour, says Wes Streeting
Unless doctors stop striking and help Labour fix the damage inflicted by the Tories, the NHS will end up dying under a government led by Reform, Wes Streeting has warned.Speaking at a special meeting of the British Medical Association’s representative body on Sunday, the health secretary said hospitals and GP surgeries were “hanging by a thread” after more than a decade of neglect by the Conservatives.Progress was being made at rescuing the NHS from the biggest crisis in its history, Streeting insisted, but he said it required “a team effort” and would only be successful if medics became “friends, not foes”.“The alternative is strikes continue to hold back the NHS’s recovery, the costs of industrial action slow down investment in new technology, equipment and additional specialty places, the changes that we all agree need to be made are blocked, and patients continue to be failed,” he said.“From there, the public will conclude that Labour has failed on the NHS and they will elect a Reform government instead – a party that has openly said it will replace the NHS with an insurance-based system.
“That’s the consequence if we fail.That’s the stakes that I’m dealing in, and don’t be under any illusions.I think you know perhaps better than I do because you work in it.The NHS is hanging by a thread.So I urge the BMA not to pull on it.
”Streeting’s direct plea to the union comes after a tumultuous summer in which resident doctors in England staged five consecutive days of strike action amid a dispute with the government over pay.“The government has changed.The attitude to the NHS and its staff has changed.I need the approach of the BMA to change too,” Streeting said.“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.
I can’t do this alone.I need partners, not adversaries.“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.
”He added: “When I said the NHS was broken, I did not just mean for patients.I am clear that the future depends on building a health service that values you, invests in you and supports you.We can only do that as friends, not foes.”Doctors were still “fighting the last enemy”, Streeting said.“The Conservatives curbed your pay – we’re raising it.
The Conservatives created training bottlenecks – we’re tackling them.The Conservatives took the NHS to the worst crisis in its history – we’re putting it back on the road to recovery.“If we fail and Nigel Farage 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.”However, Streeting was told that a BMA survey of 2,874 doctors showed many had “deep concerns” over his 10-year plan to mend the NHS.
Dr Tom Dolphin, the chair of the BMA council, said morale remained low among NHS staff and there were still high levels of vacancies.The government “will need to explain how fewer staff will be able to deliver more care,” he said.
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Apprenticeships have collapsed in England – Labour needs to fine-tune the solution, fast | Heather Stewart
Ensuring England’s workforce has the right skills for a rapidly changing economy is key to Labour’s hopes of boosting social mobility and kickstarting economic growth.So it seems unfortunate that more than a week after Keir Starmer’s drastic reshuffle, ministers are still wrangling over exactly which bits of the skills agenda will now move to Pat McFadden’s beefed-up Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).Broadly speaking, the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, is expecting to hang on to responsibility for further education, while McFadden will probably take on apprenticeships and adult skills. Jacqui Smith, the skills minister, will work across both departments.Labour market experts say there is some logic to the shift: ensuring the right training is available in the right places is one crucial part of tackling the issue of economic inactivity in a rapidly changing employment market, which falls within the DWP’s bailiwick
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There comes a time in every punk’s life when they are no longer the snarling face of the avant garde.In the UK beer community, opinion is divided about exactly when that sobering moment arrived for BrewDog, the self-styled “punk” brewery founded in Scotland in 2007 whose once-fizzing sales are now turning flat.Some point to the 2021 open letter by Punks with Purpose, a group of BrewDog staff who claimed to have endured a toxic “culture of fear”, engendered by the company’s bombastic and showmanlike founder James Watt.“For those who had given them the benefit of the doubt, that was the moment when people thought that they don’t deserve to be held up as a paragon of independent beer,” says Matt Curtis, the founding editor of the drinks magazine Pellicle.Others go back further, to when the investment group TSG Consumer Partners paid £213m for a 22
Chinese carmakers told to improve locking devices for UK market
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Thames Water paid £1m-plus to corporate spooks firm part-owned by Starmer adviser
A corporate intelligence company part-owned and formerly run by the prime minister’s business adviser has been paid more than £1m by Thames Water as the utilities firm tries to avoid renationalisation, the Guardian can reveal.Hakluyt, which was run by Varun Chandra until his appointment as Keir Starmer’s business adviser last July, has worked with Thames since 2023, providing political and strategic advice.That commercial relationship between Thames and Hakluyt has continued since Chandra joined No 10. He is now tasked with finding a private sector solution for Thames and preventing Britain’s biggest and most troubled water company from collapsing into state ownership.That presents a potential conflict of interest, as the 40-year-old still owns a multimillion-pound stake in Hakluyt and is entitled to receive dividends from the Mayfair company
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