Shadow minister tells health service ‘money is tight’ and that it must provide better value for taxpayers
The shadow health secretary has accused the NHS of using every winter crisis and challenge it faces as an excuse to ask for more money.
Speaking on a visit to Singapore, Wes Streeting said the health service needs to accept “money is tight”, and that it must rethink how the care it provides could provide better value for money for the taxpayer.
“I think people working in the NHS and the patients using the NHS can see examples of waste and inefficiency,” he told the Sunday Times. “I don’t think it’s good enough that the NHS uses every winter crisis and every challenge it faces as an excuse to ask for more money.”
He added: “The NHS is going to have to get used to the fact that money is tight and it’s going to have to get used to switching spend, and rethinking where and how care is delivered to deliver better outcomes for patients and better value for taxpayers’ money. At the moment, I think we get the worst of all worlds, which is poor outcomes alongside poor value for taxpayers.
“I’m willing to give people more freedom to innovate and create as long as they deliver. That’s the tough love that people can look forward to if I become the health and social care secretary.”
Labour ‘won’t turn on spending taps’ leader says in speech to woo big business
AUSTERITY is Labour’s economic agenda, … Keir Starmer announced today in a further lurch to the right.
A Labour government will not “turn on the spending taps,” the Labour leader said in remarks aimed at appeasing the City and the Treasury.
He acknowledged that public services are “on their knees” but offered little prospect of getting them back on their feet again.
… Keir has prioritised bringing down debt and has vowed not to increase taxes on business or the wealthy, leaving himself no room to repair the damage wrought by 15 years of capitalist crisis.
This latest dilution of Labour’s plans for government came just a day after Sir Keir went out of his way to praise former Tory prime minister Margaret Thatcher for shaking Britain out of its “stupor.”
A Momentum spokesperson said today that “these are deeply worrying remarks from Keir Starmer.
“Instead of laying out a popular alternative based on public ownership and public investment, the Labour leadership is adopting the Tories’ failed economic approach.
“Starmer’s stance isn’t just out of touch with Labour members and voters — but with the public too.”
Left Foot Forward has an exclusive with Caroline Lucas. She is set to resign as an MP at the next general election.
Caroline Lucas Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion. Official image by David Woolfall Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.
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While she is unsurprisingly damning about the prime ministers who have been in office over her 13 years in the House of Commons, Lucas has had to work closely with MPs from other parties. By virtue of being the only MP for her party, working cross-party has been central to much of her work. As a result, she offers strong praise for MPs on the opposition benches who she has worked with over the years.
She tells Left Foot Forward: “I work really closely with people like Nadia Whittome and Clive Lewis on the Green New Deal, and we have an all party group on the Green New Deal and we work very closely together on that. I enjoy working with Barry Gardiner actually on the Environmental Audit Committee just because he’s such a terrier when it comes to cross-questioning ministers. From the Liberal Democrats I work very closely with Wera Hobhouse on environmental issues, green issues. Plaid [Cymru] are very good on social issues and I’m probably closest to them of all the parties in Westminster.”
However, such praise is definitely absent from her assessment of the likely next prime minister – the Labour leader Keir Starmer. She starts by acknowledging that she and the Green Party would “prefer to see a Labour government than a Tory government”, but goes on to ask “what kind of Labour government” we are likely to get.
“I think there are real concerns over the U-turns that Keir Starmer has been performing – whether that is on what was originally a £28 billion commitment for green investment, he was going to scrap tuition fees, things like the two child benefit cap which is a really, really obscene policy and his own frontbench have said its obscene yet he has now said that he is not going to reverse that.
“He’s better on oil and gas to the extent that he’s said he won’t give licenses to new oil and gas. But then there’s a totally incoherent position of saying that he will allow Rosebank to go ahead. Whereas if he had said were he to get into government he would have tried to roll back that decision it would never have been taken in the first place, because the signal that would have given to Equinor, the Norwegian investor who is going to go ahead with Rosebank would have thought twice. So on oil and gas, there’s a problem there.”
Lucas says that on the economy and other issues, Starmer is operating with a “lack of ambition” which is “so desperately disappointing because he seems to think that if he just plays it incredibly safe, then he can tip-toe into Downing Street”, before going on to say “I think he needs to worry as well about the number of people he simply won’t be inspiring to get off their chairs and down to the polling station at all – and right now it is incredibly hard to say what Keir Starmer stands for”.
Given that Lucas spoke to Left Foot Forward the day after the major vote in parliament on whether the government should call for a ceasefire in Gaza, she also criticises Labour for failing to vote to support a ceasefire. “I think it was incredibly disappointing that Labour is on the wrong side of history on this”, she says.
Keir Starmer sucking up to the rich and powerful at World Economic Forum, Davos.
A Guardian article is saying that Labour Party leader Keith Starmer and shadow climate secretary Ed Miliband are promoting “carbon capture to support industries that still need oil and gas to pipe their waste CO2 into depleted North Sea oilfields; building floating windfarms for deep-water sites; and in green hydrogen – a zero carbon fuel needed for energy-intensive industries such as steelmaking, railways and chemicals production.”
Carbon capture is a scam to benefit the fossil-fuel industry, I don’t know if windfarms are needed for deep-water sites and green hydrogen is far from ideal. What’s needed really is a move from or transform these industries so that they don’t need vast amounts of energy. Green hydrogen needs vast amounts of energy in it’s production. Starmer can’t get away from sucking up to the fossil-fuel industry, it’s not going to be any different with him.
11.30 I’ve worked out how to secure deep-water windfarms assuming that securing them is the problem.
The Green Party MP Caroline Lucas has said that Labour is on the ‘wrong side of history’ after last night’s House of Commons vote on a ceasefire in Gaza. MPs were asked to vote on an SNP amendment to the King’s Speech which called on the UK government to “join with the international community in urgently pressing all parties to agree to an immediate ceasefire”.
Despite 56 of Keir Starmer’s MPs breaking ranks and voting for the amendment, Labour whipped its parliamentarians to abstain.
Speaking to Left Foot Forward as part of an exclusive interview reflecting on her 13 years in parliament which will be published in full tomorrow, Caroline Lucas said: “I think it was incredibly disappointing that Labour is on the wrong side of history on this”.
Labour’s position is that Israel should allow ‘humanitarian pauses’ in order for aid to enter Gaza. Lucas told Left Foot Forward why she thinks this approach is wrong. She said: “I used to work for Oxfam and I’m really struck by the fact that how so many of those international NGOs are talking about just why humanitarian pauses are simply not up to the job”, later adding: “the scale of the suffering and the killing and the horror that is happening in Gaza right now [isn’t] all going to be solved by humanitarian pauses – it has to be a ceasefire.”
Lucas continued: “People like Oxfam are pointing out that in order to get aid in in any significant quantities, some of the roads are broken now so they need to be able to mend some of the infrastructure even to get aid in to the people who need it. So I very much hope that Labour will listen to people on the ground who are really calling for a ceasefire.”
