All Change this Spring: Three Strategic Aims for NHS under Labour
Spring 2025 will be remembered as a rather dramatic, extremely busy and very eventful season for the National Health Service in the United Kingdom.
In our previous articles we considered the Labour government’s initial action plan and how Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Health Minister Wes Streeting are dedicated to fully transform the NHS from ‘Analogue to Digital’ including embracing the latest available technologies.
The leader of the UK government since July 2024, Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his team of government Ministers at Westminster are also keen to oversee the implementation of another important part of their NHS reform: ‘Hospital to Communities’.
The second major shift in NHS strategy for this much cherished organisation that employs around 1.6 million people is ‘Hospital to Communities’. ‘Hospital to Communities’ has also been considered, in our previous article about the latest improvements to NHS services, that the largest publicly funded Health Service in the world is focusing on achieving nationwide. (1)
The third key strategic aim for the National Health Service in England is ‘sickness to prevention’. We will explain and examine this policy announced by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Health Minister Wes Streeting, here in this article. We will also look in more detail at what ‘sickness to prevention’ policy means in practice, for families and individuals living in England, within our HotEnough.com articles in the near future.
The UK’s Prime Minister and Health Minister have received the results of recently commissioned medical industry expert reports and they have also consulted with several senior NHS leaders, health experts and mangers, since coming to power last summer.
The United Kingdom’s Labour government leaders aim to build a healthier nation by investing resources and launching policy that supports citizens of all ages in the UK, to be able to live healthier lifestyles. Delivering ‘sickness to prevention’ also means introducing new laws that discourage and limit unhealthy habits from forming in the first place. In addition, anyone who is eligible for NHS services, will have access to local schemes and facilities that help prevent health problems occurring in the future, wherever possible.
The ‘sickness to prevention’ reform in more detail
This reform is all about prevention of ill health. Ensuring the best ‘sickness to prevention’ NHS healthcare starts with the best possible maternity services, early years services and children and adolescent services. Great ‘sickness to prevention’ NHS healthcare also covers adult health services and the senior and elderly health care of our aging population.
Delivering optimal ‘sickness to prevention’ NHS healthcare strategy for people living in the UK of all ages involves many broad health areas and government departments including:
- Preventing smoking and vaping and related avoidable diseases and illnesses
- Promoting healthy eating, decreasing obesity and maintaining healthy lifestyle
- Reducing poverty and ameliorating the effects that financial disadvantage can have on health outcomes
- Physical health – with more physical activity support and guidance to maximise health potential
- Social services support to enable citizens to live positive, healthy independent lives
- Mental health services and improving mental health support available
We will look at all these above areas in further detail, in our next HotEnough.com article about the ‘sickness to prevention’ reforms being introduced by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Health Minister Wes Streeting and their teams and senior managers at the NHS this year.
NHS England scrapped and major changes in the NHS continue
There is a lot of change regarding healthcare generally and in the NHS in the United Kingdom specifically, at the moment. Some NHS Trusts have been reinterviewing professional medical and clerical teams for their jobs over the last few months, in anticipation of widespread shifts in the way that the NHS will operate going forward, under Labour leadership.
Last month Amanda Pritchard Chief Executive Officer of NHS England resigned from her position after making some controversial comments. Amanda Pritchard has shown an unwavering commitment to leading and raising standards in the NHS but has also been frank about the scale of the challenges the NHS faces.
Senior Labour leaders including Amanda Pritchard have admitted the failure of recent but previous conservative government NHS schemes, like the recovery plan for dentistry, which has resulted in ‘dental desserts’ across the British Iles, with millions unable to access an NHS dentist in their area.
This month Paul Corrigan, who was formally a conservative Member of Parliament under the last government and who has been a senior aide to Labour Health Minister Wes Streeting, warmed that the “NHS may be collapsing” according to the Telegraph newspaper. (2)
Paul Corrigan’s warning may likely be overly catastrophising the situation, considering the slight improvements in the statistics monitoring NHS waiting times and hospital services this month, as the annual pressures of the winter flu season on the NHS ease, as we head into March 2025. (3)
However, despite the incredible contribution made by many thousands of highly qualified professionals and their assistants who strive every day to do their best to serve patients in the NHS, there is much work to do to consistently provide the top-quality public healthcare services for all, in the spirit that Labour leader Clement Attlee envisaged at the NHS’s inception in 1946.
This is especially clear when looking at the latest published data, as shockingly the British Medical Journal reported that last month how “48 000 patients waited over twelve hours on trolleys in emergency departments for a hospital bed in February”. (3)
This demonstrates how much work there is to be done in order to improve recruitment, resource allocation and financial investment all across NHS public health services. The need for enhancing NHS systems ranges from upgrading hospital buildings to providing adequate social care services for service users in their local communities.
It is essential, for example, to enable patients who are relatively well again after hospital treatment, to be able to return home again after a hospital stay so they can be able to live independently at home once more, with the right medical support. (3)
NHS England will be dissolved and merged into a single Labour government led public sector NHS.
This week Labour leader Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Health Secretary MP Wes Streeting announced a major shift in National Health Service structure and leadership as they cancelled NHS England completely. NHS England was an ‘arm’s length’ (from the government) governing organisation or ‘Quango’. The acronym Quango stands for “quasi-autonomous non-governmental organization” and NHS England was set up by the previous conservative government and for the last twelve years has been in charge of managing and delivering NHS goals and services. (4)
Taking back control of the NHS more closely under government leadership with one senior team at the helm of the NHS once more will be a big adjustment. “I’m devolving resources and responsibilities to the NHS frontline.” stated Health Minister and MP Wes Streeting in a government press release yesterday. (5)
The move which may cause thousands of jobs losses, is justified by MP Wes Streeting in order to improve efficiency internally within the NHS. “When money is so tight, we cannot justify such a complex bureaucracy with two organisations doing the same jobs.” explained Streeting who believes this radical change in the way the NHS operates, will improve service standards and waiting times in the longer term. (5)
However, there is no doubt that there is now a large-scale restructuring of the NHS afoot and reorganising such a hierarchical and massive organisation such as the NHS is complicated and complex. Reforming the NHS demands considerable time, money and resources even for a government department that is used to dealing with huge scale projects. Leading major change is notoriously difficult even in the most agile and flexible businesses.
Understandably sometimes governments need to make tough and unpopular decisions, to ensure that the UK fulfils its key healthcare priorities and commitments, within an uncertain global environment where the world is changing rapidly.
Like several other advanced Western nations, in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland we have an aging population and we have limited resources.
Public funding for health services in England comes from Department of Health and Social Care’s budget. The Department’s spending in 2022/23 was £181.7 billion and is forecast to rise by more than 4% over 2025/26. An extra £22.6 billion was additionally allocated to support NHS services and the upkeep of NHS buildings and estates in the current Chancellor Rachel Reeve’s Autumn 2024 budget last October. (3) (6) (7)
Critics have accused Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Health Minister Wes Streeting MP and their teams of instigating an ill-timed and disruption causing reorganisation. This is at a point in time when many people say the NHS and the amazing people that work for the NHS, are still trying to recover and catchup after the difficulties caused by the pandemic healthcare emergency.
Recent international economic events affecting the energy prices and high inflation negatively impacts how far limited NHS resources can be spent. Restructuring the NHS management comes at a time when there has already been a legacy of austerity and underinvestment in infrastructure and areas like social services and mental health services, for more than a generation. Employee morale has a lot of room for improvement in most areas of the NHS including maternity services and community healthcare, currently.
Writing this week in The British Medical Journal, Hugh Alderwick fears that this new NHS organisation shift will inevitably “waste time and effort that could be spent on improving care instead.” (3)
We hope that many of the several thousand people employed by NHS England who may sadly lose their jobs after NHS England has been abolished, find new opportunities within the freshly streamlined new government led centralised NHS. This reorganisation means that NHS departments will be directly led by Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Health Minister Wes Streeting MP and their colleagues who are NHS senior leaders reshaping the new service and will be responsible for guiding its success.
It is wise to consider that sometimes major reorganisation can be a series of changes that can ultimately be justified as just what is needed in organisations, even if it is hard and painful at the time to go through the huge modifications needed to modernise, develop and grow.
We hope that Prime Minister Keir Starmer and health Minister Wes Streeting’s decisions will in the long term enable the UK to be in the most optimal position and ready to be productive and efficient enough to confidently face the new challenges that delivering top quality healthcare in the 21st century will likely bring, to the world’s oldest and widely respected National Health Service.
(1) ‘NHS: ‘Hospital to Communities’: What does it mean and is it happening?’ Mandy How, 13 February 2025, HotEnough.com ‘NHS: ‘Hospital to Communities’: What does it mean and is it happening?’ HotEnough.com
(2) ‘NHS may be collapsing, warns Streeting aide.’ Michael Searles, Health Correspondent, Telegraph UK online newspaper, 6 March 2025 ‘NHS may be collapsing, warns Streeting aide.’ Michael Searles, Health Correspondent, Telegraph UK
(3) ‘Labour government scraps NHS England’ Hugh Alderwick, The British Medical Journal, 18 March 2025 ‘Labour government scraps NHS England’ Hugh Alderwick, The British Medical Journal
(4) ‘NHS Confederation and NHS Providers joint statement on announcing NHS England will be abolished.’ NHS Confederation website NHSconfed.org website, 13 March 2025 ‘NHS Confederation and NHS Providers joint statement on announcing NHS England will be abolished.’ NHS Confederation website NHSconfed.org website
(5) ‘World’s largest quango scrapped under reforms to put patients first’ Department of Health and Social Care, NHS England and the Rt Hon MP Wes Streeting, 13 March 2025 ‘World’s largest quango scrapped under reforms to put patients first’ Department of Health and Social Care, NHS England and the Rt Hon MP Wes Streeting
(6) ‘The NHS budget and how it has changed’ The King’s Fund organisation website, 18 June 2024 ‘The NHS budget and how it has changed’ The King’s Fund organisation website
(7) ‘Chancellor announces £22.6bn cash injection for NHS in England’ Anna Bawden, The Guardian, 30 October 2024 ‘Chancellor announces £22.6bn cash injection for NHS in England’ Anna Bawden, The Guardian