Starmer to deliver damning verdict on how Tories left NHS and set out reform vision – UK politics live

The prime minister will deliver a speech this morning after Lord Darzi’s damning report on the NHS

Good morning. Keir Starmer has been in office for just over two months, and for much of that time the government has focused on trying to explain to the public just how bad was the legacy the left by the Tories. There has been extensive focus on the economy, and on prisons. Today Starmer is focusing on the NHS.

And, arguably, this is the most important issue at all. According to polling by More in Common, at the next election the single issue most likely to determine whether Labour has succeeded or not is whether NHS waiting lists have fallen.

The state of the NHS isn’t an accident. The health service was hit by three big shocks. The 2010s saw the biggest slowdown in funding since it was founded in 1948. The next big shock was the top-down reorganisation of the NHS, which threw it into chaos for years. Then came the shock of the Covid pandemic, which hit the NHS harder than other similar countries – largely because of the other two shocks.

People have every right to be angry. It’s not just because the NHS is so personal to all of us - it’s because some of these failings are life and death.

Take the waiting times in A&E. That’s not just a source of fear and anxiety - it’s leading to avoidable deaths.

This government is working at pace to build a 10-year plan. Something so different from anything that has come before.

Instead of the top-down approach of the past, this plan is going to have the fingerprints of NHS staff and patients all over it. Continue reading...