I was planning a calm morning. After minor Twitter storms over the last few days, I thought I would steer clear for a day. Then I noticed this Tweet from Wes Streeting, which I responded to, as I note:
Is this Wes Streeting saying Labour backs charging and privatisation of the NHS? If he isn't, what is he saying? https://t.co/vRoiOZOSWN
— Richard Murphy (@RichardJMurphy) November 8, 2022
The video in the Tweet should work - but it may take you to Twitter first. You do not need to be a Twitter user.
Streeting says:
- There is no more money for the NHS after a one-off workforce investment
- The NHS is a twentieth-century model of care
- There is no more money without unspecified reform
- Without that reform there will be no NHS
I think I quite reasonably surmised that he was suggesting:
- Charging
- More privatisation. I had more diagnostic centres in mind, which is a massive area of private sector activity in healthcare because it is routine in nature and requires little decision-making outside a laid down protocol, meaning it is low risk and so high reward.
So, I said so. That is the sort of thing I have done for a long time now. I don't do social media for the sake of being popular. I use it to ask awkward questions and to seek social justice.
I got a response from Wes Streetiung remarkably quickly:
First of all, I note the first line. Being abusive is not a good way to indicate you have a good argument. The Labour leadership may not like my Tweets, but I am not a member of Labour and have no intention of being so. I am simply asking serious questions of those who want to be a government who are making some comments that are very hard to understand from a left-of-centre perspective. If that's hysterical in their opinion, so be it, but I beg to differ.
I replied to the points of substance as follows:
There has been no reply as yet.
I hope Wes Streeting rises to the challenge of explaining his new model for the NHS because if Labour is not going to answer such questions now it will not in any way be prepared for government.
At the same time I suggest he calms down. Asking what his funding model might be if it is not tax is not hysterical. It's about asking for a calm appraisal of the facts, the key ones of which are:
- As a matter of fact, we have an ageing population.
- As a matter of fact, in medical terms, the elderly are the most costly people in society.
- As a matter of fact, Labour is saying it will refuse free entry into the UK, so its population growth is going to be limited, especially by a low birth rate.
- And, as a matter of fact, Labour says it wants to employ more UK nationals in the NHS.
- As a matter of fact, that means we must have a real shift of resources amongst the working-age population into the NHS from elsewhere in the economy. This will be necessary to manage the growing need for end-of-life care because whenever it happens end of life care is almost invariably medically intensive, which no amount of early diagnosis is going to prevent.
- And as a matter of fact without more 'taxpayers' money' (a term in itself meaningless, since there is no such thing) how this additional care will be funded without private money being requested is very hard to work out for me, as someone pretty used to macroeconomic thinking.
So what is the answer, Wes? Tell me what your funding model given these facts is, please? I really want to know because I care about the NHS and you say its future is dependent on this new funding model you aren't telling us about, so what is it please?
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Thank you Mr Murphy for all that you do. I have notifications turned on because I don’t want to miss a tweet. You have nothing to gain personally from the time you take to research and explain in terms we understand. It’s a difficult subject when you are not qualified, I thank you for your unbiased, fair and honest posts.
Susanne.
Thank you
The more I hear from Labour the more I worry. They are just spewing the same neoliberal rubbish as the Tories.
A donor to Streeting has significant interests in private health:
https://skwawkbox.org/2022/06/14/shadow-health-sec-streeting-takes-large-sum-from-tory-donor-with-huge-private-health-interests/
https://skwawkbox.org/2022/07/11/unite-health-section-challenges-streeting-over-donations-and-conflicts-of-interest/
If I were to look at an obvious point about ‘shift of resources’ it seems to me that given that UK’s low productivity and the amount of ‘under employment’ or inefficient use of labour, eg zero hours contracts part time jobs only etc then there is a question about why Labour doesnt propose to tackle these areas.
Secondly, given that we dont have many medical staff, and they take a long time to train, what resources do we have that might reduce demand on the NHS? Two obvious areas I might look at are the price and availability of alcohol, which could be addressed with the stroke of a pen at no cost to the state, and the condition of a lot of housing in the UK which undoubtedly contributes to a lot of ill health.
John Boxall
I am afraid I would have to argue that the NHS stress caused by the price and availability of alcohol cannot be solved by the stroke of a pen. You can make alcohol more expensive and less available, but those whose need for it makes them a cost to the NHS would wtill have isues for which they would need alternative support.
Excellent questions. Depressing use of language from Streeting, but looking on the bright side, very good that he thought it was worth replying to you. It shows your questions and arguments are being noticed and so (presumably) is the attention they are getting. Let’s hope it helps to push Labour in the right direction.
“The NHS is a twentieth-century model of care” I would love to know what a 21st century model of care is. I had an e-mail today from a friend it is relevant:
my mum broke her arm (80 years old) and after 3 hours of waiting for an ambulance (in Wales) we were advised that she would need to be brought to hospital if she wants to be seen today. People with broken bones are waiting up to 18 hours to be taken to hospital. To contrast, XXxxX my son opened the hot water bottle we’d given him and burnt his leg – ambulance was here in less than 20mins at rush hour…thank god we live in……….. (not UK & not US).
The problem with the ambulance is to do with funding – nothing else. This is how the Tories treat the issue in Wales: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4FR4gO8Sio by blaming the lack of funding on the Welsh Labour gov……..who they have starved of funds. It is odd that Streeting is not attacking this lack of funds – note that the exchange in the Senedd was all about ……..ambulances. Still it would be interesting to hear from Streeting on how “21st cent models of care” will fix a broken arm. Come on Wes, I’m all ears, doubtless you have some great ideas.
Back in 1944, when Beveridge produced his report, one of his colleagues at the LSE produced a counter blast: Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom” with its claim that central planning/socilaism would only result in “serfdom”. Surveying the slo-mo train crash that is the UK, it would seem that Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom” has come about but not quite in the way he envisaged – a 40 year experiment applying his ideas continues to reduce UK subjects to a status very similar to that of their 14th century forebears – serfs. I am fairly confident that Streeting & other B.Liarites will continue to privatise the NHS and continue the Hayekian experiment. Pathetic.
PS: One of my good cycling friends is an…. Austrian economist – he despises Hayek, thinks the man was at very best stupid if not quasi-insane.
Mike, I think your Austrian friend is right about Hayek. I probably wouldn’t contend he was insane but rather mentally unstable. This is because insanity is such an extreme mental state.
Govts have never been able to resist serially ‘restructuring’ the NHS. The Tories have done two since 2010 – including the disastrous Lansley model. Each time there seems to have been private sector encroachment. But Streeting’s rubbishing of the ’20th century’ model seems to be intended to mean anything that hearers want it to mean.
Despite Labour’s mistakes they had got waiting lists pretty well down by keeping spending on trend. 10 years of Tory halving spend growth and cutting real NHS earnings has produced the present crisis.
Some of us have been arguing for multi-discipline regional diagnosis centres (not private) to replace the serial pathways patients have to endure – taking months to get diagnosed – often too late. This could reduce costs – people diagnosed early may need simpler, shorter treatment.
But Richard is so right – Labour shows little sign of being prepared to engage explicitly about the funding model, or being prepared to challenge the big corporates around junk food and other healthy lifestyle issues. .
I think you state the pertinent facts… and the questions follow obviously.
My take from the short clip was that Labour will throw resources at the NHS to deal with the current crisis and that they feel they have to say there is a longer term plan.. but have no interest in saying what that plan is.
Tactically? Understandable. Intellectually? Bankrupt.
With regards to “abuse”, I have seen worse directed at you in this blog… but I accept that he should be held to a higher standard.
But there is a problem. Health and social care requires ever more resources and the electorate have an annoying tendency to vote for the “magic pill” which supposedly delivers better/more healthcare with less money. Does Labour dare to tell the truth?
My solution is to try and get a consensus that
a) there is an emergency and we need to sort out the immediate crisis in any way we can. (More money etc.)
b) as a nation, half of any increase in wealth should go on health (half on whatever else we want). If trend growth is 1% and health is currently 10% of GDP then that imply a 5% real increase in health spending each year over the long term.
c) the lottery of good/bad health in life means that an insurance system is best. And the fairest most efficient insurance system is the NHS funded by Central Government.
Your last is fundamental
Just spent an informative few minutes looking at Wes Streeting’s list of members interests. I recommend it.
I will look….
Well done Richard.
The tweet storms were well handled.
The Jefferson quotes.
https://twitter.com/bullshitjobs/status/1429899604154372101?s=20
Streeting wants to believe in private profit and therefore tax pays for things. Despite all the evidence.
He is not for ‘The People’ and democracy, but for maintaining status of elite money men. The banksters.
Good for you Richard. It’s about time Labour were asked some difficult questions.
Streeting’s donors include Trevor Chinn, Waheed Ali and others connected with private health care.
How I detest all these people forever saying the NHS has to “modernise” The NHS is constantly changing and taking up new models of care- look at the number of things done as day surgery now that were never done before, the types of orthopaedic treatment where patient in the past spent days / weeks in bed and are now on their feet in 24 hours and out the hospital door in 48hours etc etc.
Prevention is the role of Public Health – which was shifted to Local Authorities and had its budget cut every year since 2010. £1 billion less and counting. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langas/article/PIIS2468-1253(21)00394-0/fulltext
Other prevention is by Government implementing things such as an obesity strategy / legislating about salt and sugar levels / having good school meal standards and availability for all children / implementing an activity strategy etc. I don’t hear Wes (who I am almost certain I’ve read has private healthcare backing) saying anything about any of that., but he is always castigating the NHS.
I have zero confidence that the NHS is safe in the current incarnation of the former Labour Party.
To be fair, it is a tweet from LBC not from Wes Streeting, and the quoted part misses the bits he said previously – “there isn’t an answer to the immediate crisis which doesn’t involve more investment” – or the next bit “Labour’s job will be to grip the immediate crisis but also to make the right long-term decisions so we have an NHS fit for the future”.
The bit he has not explained is what an “NHS fit for the future” would look like, and how that might be different from the current NHS.
But I’d still trust Streeting more than Steve Barclay or Thérèse (“ABCDD”) Coffey.
I listened around the quote, just in case
I would prefer Streeting to a Tory
But will he protect the NHS from charges and privatisation? I note my friend Prem Sikhs is as doubtful as me.
Psst! Prem Sikka.
I have retweeted his comments today…
Richard, register of interests, Streeting, Jan 2022, £15,ooo. Name of donor John Armitage, hedge fund founder. Armitage’s fund, I understand, owns shares worth almost £834m. in United Health, a vast US private health corporation. Worth checking out?
If you want to know the direction of play that our relatively rich politicians have for us, then look at NHS dentistry:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/oct/21/further-cuts-will-kill-off-nhs-dental-services-chancellor-told
This year, I have been through 4 different NHS dentists at the practice I am registered with. Every time a new one comes in, I have to pay for a new checkup because they will not treat me from the previous dentist’s notes! It must have something to do with how they are paid by the practice.
On the issue of the NHS alone we would be better off marching into Parliament and kicking most of the healthcare-for-profit -politicians out of it.
Basically, Streeting is what is known in politics as a WANKER:
Won’t
Acknowledge
Neo-liberalism’s
Knowing
Economic
Reductionism
When you get a group of these people together, they are WANKERS:
Will take
Advantage of
Neo-liberalism’s
Knowing
Economic
Redundant
Skulduggery
It’s bizarre to me than none of these buffoons look back in history as to how the NHS was actually founded & funded.
We have every right to be disgusted by the so-called heirs of Clem Attlee. Heirs? They do even come close.
PSR, superb word play. Enjoyed them a lot.
Simon Stevens was CEO of United Health for years before he came back to the UK to become head of the NHS. He is now in the house of lords. I imagine he and Prem Sikka do not agree on much.
Has Streeting not noticed the latest upheaval in the NHS? The new ICS system, straight from the US.
https://weownit.org.uk/end-nhs-privatisation-save-lives
Leaflets out now for the weownit campaign. I would be sticking them through people’s doors now but it’s raining again.
Soggy leaflets aren’t good
Please note the US health industry takes 18% of the GDP and still does not cover the whole population, How does that compare with the UK?
Does UK business realised the consequences of privatising health? They will have to pay their workers more to keep them healthy or pay their health insurance. This could like the USA wipe out all manufacturing in the UK
Excellent clarity in your questions. For some reason the last verse of the poem, The Walrus and the Carpenter, come to mind:
” O Oysters,’ said the Carpenter,
You’ve had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?’
But answer came there none —
And this was scarcely odd, because
They’d eaten every one.”
Labour is also being eaten by those same super rich.
Funding will come from a system of locally issued community credits that are earned into existence for participating in activities that eliminate waste. What’s being called “The Stoke Pound”.
Innovative….
And unlikely
BBC has a item this morning “Rise in energy firms remotely switching homes to prepay meters”. People can be remotely put on prepayment meters and presumably switched off via smart meters.
“Energy firms use the technology to swap customers who are in debt to the more costly plan without needing a warrant.
Ofgem said it had received reports of “vulnerable customers being left without power for days or even weeks”.
This is why we need state ownership. The government cannot then say it does not control the industry and has to deal with the problem humanely up front.
The smaller state means the governments pass the buck on dealing with crucial matters of security and welfare – they don’t have to take tough decisions.
Here’s an article published a few years back by fellow travellers in the direction of reforming the ludicrous debt-based financial system we have. Read all of it if you wish but the first page says it all, as does the concluding sentence quoting Keynes to the effect that we can afford it if we can actually do it.
http://www.progressivepulse.org/economics/is-world-leading-nhs-healthcare-an-affordable-proposition
I should make clear that whilst I do not write for Progressive Pulse I do direct it.