Wes Streeting has warned that the NHS will get no extra funding from Labour without “major surgery” or reform, including more use of the private sector, reports the Independent.

Writing in the Sun – itself widely seen as an insult by millions of trade unionists who are frequently bombarde with abuse by the millionaire Tory press – the Shadow Health Secretary insisted he would not be put off by “middle-class lefties” who cry “betrayal”, adding he was “up for the fight” with NHS unions.

Responding to Wes Streeting’s comments, Momentum Co-Chair Hilary Schan said: “This is an unhelpful intervention from Wes Streeting which bodes ill for the prospects of an NHS recovery under a Labour Government. By pledging to continue down the Tories’ path of underfunding and private sector involvement, Streeting is doubling down on the root causes of the NHS’s struggles.

“Meanwhile, his attack on those asking for more funding as ‘middle-class lefties’ is a slap in the face to hundreds of thousands of nurses, doctors and other NHS staff in desperate need of a pay-rise, and a recipe for a continued recruitment and retention crisis. It’s time Labour’s leadership rediscovered the values which led to our Party founding the NHS – and commit to end privatisation and give our NHS the money it needs.”

Streeting likes to claim that opposition to health privatisation is an ideological position held by the left which is out of step with a more pragmatic public who are concerned more with improved delivery. But in fact, two-thirds of voters are rightly opposed to NHS outsourcing.

Voters overwhelmingly understand that underfunding is the central issue. Four-fifths of voters and 91% of Labour voters want more money for the NHS.

 Unions too have expressed their criticism of Streeting’s approach. After his speech to last autumn’s Labour Party Conference, Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham responded: “We cannot fix the NHS if we don’t reverse the crippling staff shortages. And we can’t do that if we don’t improve pay and conditions.”

In a recent survey of over 3,000 Unite members, working in a multitude of roles throughout the NHS in England, nearly half said that in the past year staffing levels in their area regularly reached a point where “patient care has been compromised and unsafe.”

Andrew Fisher, Labour’s Former Executive Director of Policy and Research under the Corbyn leadership, was quick to spot the contradiction in Streeting’s argument, asking, “where is Wes Streeting getting the staff for his private sector expansion? And wouldn’t the billions he wants to chuck into the private sector be better spent expanding NHS capacity?”

In 2022, Labour’s Conference unanimously voted to end NHS privatisation and establish a publicly-funded, publicly-owned National Care Service. Streeting’s continued insistence on privatisation is a calculated snub to the democratic will of the Party. Worse, it further alienates the very activists whose campaigning work Labour needs to secure a comprehensive general election victory.

Image: Wes Streeting MP. Source: https://members-api.parliament.uk/api/Members/4504/Portrait?cropType=FullSize. Author: David Woolfall,  licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.