Health

Workforce

Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting wants to oversee “one of the biggest expansions of the NHS workforce in history” if Labour wins power. This sentiment was reiterated in the LabourList-published policy platform in October 2023. Labour claims it will fund the NHS workforce expansion by abolishing non-dom tax status. Discussing the NHS workforce at the 2022 Labour Party Conference, Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting said Labour would:

• Double the number of medical training places;

• Create 10,000 nurses and midwifery placements every year;

• Double the number of district nurses qualifying every year;

• Train 5,000 health visitors.

Labour’s Mission for Public Services document outlined further plans around recruitment and retention:

• Reverse changes to pension allowances made by the Government in the March Budget 2023;

• Introduce a targeted scheme for senior doctors to address retention issues;

• Review existing training pathways and look at new entry routes to a career in the NHS;

• Produce independent workforce projections of NHS staffing;
• Recruit and retain more carers by introducing better rights at work, decent standards, fair pay and proper training that offers progression opportunities.

The LabourList article which outlined Labour’s policy platform included:

• Long-term workforce planning that is focused on retention and recruitment, including independent projections of the numbers of staff needed.

• Review to existing training pathways and explore new entry routes to a career in the NHS, including high-quality apprenticeships

• Ensure that there are high-quality training and CPD opportunities.

• Use research to help to retain staff in the NHS. There is evidence that giving time for research to staff who are interested enhances recruitment and retention.

Mr Streeting said at a meeting of the Hornsey and Wood Green Labour party in November 2023 that he is considering financial incentives to improve staff retention. Such measures could include “student loan forgiveness” for newly qualified doctors and nurses in England. BMA Head Professor Philip Banfield welcomed the remarks, suggesting “this well worth exploring.”

Primary and Secondary Care

At the 2022 Labour Party Conference, Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting said Labour would:

• Guarantee patients can book a GP appointment within two days;

• Allow more self-referral for patients to specialist services;

• Agree on a 10-year plan with the NHS to shift focus out of the hospitals and into the community .

Labour’s Mission for Public Services document, published in May 2023, expanded on plans to open new referral routes so patients can refer themselves to a specialist service or diagnostic tests.

The document also stated Labour aims to increase the proportion of people who get a GP appointment when they want or sooner within five years of entering Government.

Furthermore, it outlines plans to accelerate the rollout of independent prescribing to establish a Community Pharmacist Prescribing Service.

Praising pharmacists as “highly qualified experts in healthcare” at an IPPR conference fringe event, Mr Streeting vowed to elevate the role of community pharmacies and claimed that this would support GPs.

To target waiting lists, Labour plans to use a single waiting list, so if a nearby hospital has a shorter waiting time for a procedure, patients have the option to be treated there.

In October 2023, Starmer said a Labour Government would cut NHS waiting lists in England by funding two million more hospital appointments a year, Sir Keir Starmer has said. He said that £1.1 billion per year would be spent to ensure 40,000 out-of-hours appointments each week.

An estimated £1.5 billion will be set aside to clear backlog through funding extra overtime and equipment, funded by scrapping non-dom status.

Writing for The Telegraph in August 2023, Streeting pledged Labour would introduce financial incentives to general practice:

• Paying GPs extra if they let patients see their doctor of choice;

• Letting patients decide whether their appointment is face-to-face or takes place over the phone;

• To meet costs, funding will be redistributed from poorly performing surgeries to the ones which are providing a better service.

Incentives for GP practices was also referenced in the LabourList-published policy agenda.

The article also stated that Labour plan to:

• Ensure everyone with complex multimorbidities has a named care coordinator in the community.

• Expand the role of community pharmacy.

On 5 October 2023, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer announced his strategy for NHS dentistry and the nation’s oral health – his first policy announcement ahead of the party’s annual conference:

• Provide an extra 700,000 urgent dental appointments and offer incentives for new dentists to work in areas with the greatest need.

• Introduce a programme to have children brush their teeth under supervision in schools.

• Overhaul the NHS dental contract to change how the service worked in the long term.

• The plans would be backed by £111 million a year, which Labour said would come from abolishing the non-dom tax status.

Following the publication of the Government’s dental recovery plan, shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting confirmed in February 2024 that Labour would reform the NHS dental contract within days of getting into office.

Labour built on their Dentistry Rescue Plan in December 2023 by:

• Promising newly qualified dentists would be offered “golden hellos” of £20,000 if they agreed to work in “dental deserts” that are struggling to recruit.

• Under plans, new dentists would be forced to work in the NHS for three years if they accept the financial incentive, otherwise they would have to pay the sum back

In a keynote address to the Institute for Government’s (IFG) annual conference in January 2024, shadow Health Minister Karin Smyth announced Labour would introduce a High Street opticians partnership.

• Smyth announced that a Labour Government would negotiate a new deal to deliver NHS out-patient appointments via High Street opticians by using existing funds.
• This would include cataract pre-assessments and operation follow-ups, glaucoma monitoring, and common diagnostic tests.

As reported in the Telegraph in December 2023, Labour is planning GP hubs where patients can walk in at evenings and weekends. Under the plans, every part of the country would trial “neighbourhood health centres” bringing together a wide range of services, including doctors, dentists and treatment of minor injuries. Mr Streeting was inspired by a similar model in Australia.

Also taking inspiration from his trip to Australia, Mr Streeting pledged to use AI to analyse brain scans of people who are suspected of suffering a stroke as well as introduce a new ten-year plan for health and social care.

Mental Health

Discussing mental health at the 2022 Labour Party Conference, former Shadow Mental Health Minister Dr Rosena Allin-Khan said Labour would:

• Guarantee NHS mental health support within a month of referral;

• Recruit 8,500 mental health workers within the party’s first term in office;

• Place specialist mental health support in schools;

• Establish mental health hubs in every community for under 25s – without referral.

Shadow Mental Health Minister Abena Oppong-Asare confirmed that these plans will be funded by abolishing tax breaks for private schools and private equity fund managers.

In May 2023, during his third mission speech for health, Starmer said Labour would:

• Ensure that suicide rates are declining within five years.

Included in the policy agenda published by LabourList was also a pledge to publish the first ever long-term, whole government plan to improve mental health outcomes.

According to a November 2023 Times article, Labour has pledged to revive reforms to mental health laws, addressing inequalities that leave Black people four times more likely to be detained and giving patients’ choices greater weight. Speaking in a debate on the King’s speech that same month, Streeting pledged that Labour would reform the Mental Health Act in their first King’s Speech.

In May 2023, LabourList leaked extracts from Labour’s expected policy programme, which included plans to:

• Have parity of esteem between mental and physical health;

• Publish the first long-term plan to improve mental health outcomes;

• Develop and implement new NHS targets for mental health services in England;

• Make patients’ and families’ voices central to national assessments of the safety of mental health services;

• Put children at the heart of the mental health plan.

Social Care

Speaking at the Association of Directors of Adults Social Services Spring Seminar in April 2023, Liz Kendall set out Labour’s social care commitments:

• Introduce a long-term 10-year plan for social care;

• Introduce a “home first approach” to social care;

• Tackle staff shortages in social care” through the introduction of new Fair Pay Agreements to be negotiated through sectoral collective bargaining;

• • These agreements, set to begin in the social care sector, would be signed into law within the first 100 days of a Labour Government;

• Establish a National Care Service which would work in partnership with local councils.

Speaking at a Labour conference fringe event in 2023, Shadow Minister for Social Care Andrew Gwynne claimed that the National Care Service would be delivered over a decade. He elaborated that it would include national terms and conditions delivered on the local level in collaboration with local leaders.

Labour’s Mission for Public Services document outlined further outlined plans to:

• Require all care providers to demonstrate financial sustainability and responsible tax practices before being allowed to receive contracts from local authorities and gaining registration from CQC;

• Support unpaid carers by giving them paid family carer’s leave and give people in care homes a new legal right to see loved ones.

According to an Observer article published in October 2023, Labour will avoid laying out a detailed plan for social care reform, and how to fund it, in its manifesto. It does, however, remain “committed” to reform. 

NEW: In April 2024, acting shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Alison McGovern stated that Labour will review the system of carer’s allowance.

Labour has not yet set out details around its funding plan for social care. In May 2023, LabourList leaked extracts from Labour’s expected policy programme, which included plans to:

• Back national partnership working in social care, bringing together employers, unions, and government;

• Move towards professionalising the social care workforce.

In October 2023, Labour pledged to “govern by co-producing its policies with disabled people.”

In February 2024, The Observer reported that Labour will not seek to legislate on the creation of a new National Care Service in its first king’s speech.

• Instead, the party will focus on a fair pay agreement for care workers as well as issues of recruitment and retention, as part of a wider workers’ rights bill.

• Its plans for a complete overhaul of social care will, however, be presented as a longer-term mission taking at least 10 years and two parliaments.

Prevention

Labour’s Mission for Public Services document outlined Labour’s vision for delivering a “prevention first” revolution.

Cross-departmental health policy

• Create a national framework that is targeted towards improving the broader determinants of health, including the prioritisation of children’s health and inequalities;

• Establish a mission delivery board to bring together all Departments with an influence over the social determinants of health;

• Ensure devolution agreements are designed to reward the delivery of Labour’s mission outcomes at a combined authority level.

The LabourList-published policy agenda included further details, such as:

• Work across departments to tackle health problems related to poverty, including cold, damp, mouldy and overcrowded housing conditions

Mr Streeting emphasised this cross-departmental approach throughout Labour’s 2023 conference fringe events.

In January 2024, Labour outlined a series of measures over time that forms part of its Child Health Action Plan. This includes:

• Establish fully funded breakfast clubs serving healthy food in every primary school in England;

• Introduce a targeted national supervised toothbrushing programme for three-to-five year-olds in breakfast clubs;

• Implement a national curriculum with a wide range of physical activities compulsory for all schools;

• Restrict adverts of foods high in fat, sugar and salt in favour of healthier options;

• Implement the 9 PM watershed for junk food advertising on television;

• Ban paid-for advertising of less healthy foods on online media and ban paid-for advertising of less healthy foods on online media aimed at children.

• Ban vapes from being advertised to appeal to children, and make sure that the incremental smoking ban passes through Parliament;

• Bring in a legally binding ‘Decent Homes Standard 2’ to ensure families do not live in damp, mouldy conditions;

• Pass a Clean Air Act with stricter statutory targets on air pollution that match World Health Organisation recommendations;

• Introduce specialist mental health support for children and young people in every school;

• Deliver an open access children and young people’s mental health hub for every community;

• Tackle sewage discharges which pose a health risk.

• At Labour conference, Mr Streeting criticised the sugar tax and stated that he would prioritise alternative legislation during a cost of living crisis.

• Cut paediatric waiting times by delivering two million more operations, scans and appointments.

• Introduce reforms to vaccine administration to help tackle the measles outbreak.

• Create a cross-departmental mission delivery board that prioritises child health and includes a focus on inequalities, well-being, physical and mental health.

Smoke-free Britain

• Develop a roadmap to a smoke-free Britain.

• Make all hospital trusts integrate ‘opt-out’ smoking cessation interventions into routine care by reporting on progress in their annual reports and having a named lead on smoking cessation.

• Legislate to require tobacco companies to include information in tobacco products that dispels the belief that smoking reduces stress and anxiety.

• Ban vapes from being branded and advertised to appeal to children;

• Work with local councils and the NHS to ensure vapes are used as a stop-smoking aid rather than a new form of smoking.

• Throughout Labour conference, Mr Streeting threatened to “come down like a tonne of bricks” on the vaping industry for addicting a generation of children to nicotine. He pledged to investigate where and how vapes are being sold and ensure the industry “cleaned up their act” deploying state regulation if necessary.

Health in the workplace

• Tackle insecure work with Labour’s New Deal for Working People.

Health inequalities

• Halve the gap in healthy life expectancy between different regions of England;

• Set an explicit target to end the Black maternal mortality gap.

Further details were included in the LabourList-published policy agenda:

• Provide parliamentary time for free votes on modernising abortion law to ensure women do not go to jail for getting an abortion at a vulnerable time

In October 2023, Streeting said that Labour would abolish “outdated” restrictions on the sale of infant milk and intervene to alleviate the baby formula pricing crisis by bringing down costs for families.

Mounting pressure from Labour circles means a proposed change to the draft policy document calls on the national party “to build on Labour in London and Wales” by providing free school meals for all primary school children. This would expand upon the existing commitment from Labour to provide just free school breakfasts.

According to a leaked document obtained by LabourList of 121 recommended amendments to Labour’s current draft policy platform, a detailed section is due to be added promising a “roadmap to a smoke-free Britain”. It suggests growing Labour confidence on the issue, and similarly reflects plans outlined in Labour’s health mission briefing.

In May 2023, LabourList leaked extracts from Labour’s expected policy programme, which included plans to: “Have a strategy to ensure that women and girls around the country have access to safe, high-quality healthcare that supports their wellbeing and will address ongoing systemic failures to meet their health and care needs”.

After visiting Australia in December 2023 and hearing about their e-cigarette legislation, Wes Streeting suggested that vapes could be made prescription-only. He accused “Big Tobacco” and the vaping industry of “crying crocodile tears” and identified vaping as a “gateway drug.”

Major conditions

Delivering his third mission speech for health in May 2023, Starmer said that Labour would:

• Ensure 75% of all cancer is diagnosed at stage one or two;

• Reduce deaths from heart disease and stroke by a quarter within a decade;

• Reverse the rising trend in the rate of lives lost to suicide, so they are declining within five years.

In December 2023, Labour made a pledge to “Catch Up On Cancer” by:

• Doubling the number of MRI and CT scanners;

• Purchasing the latest, AI-enabled scanners;

• Delivering an extra 2 million appointments on evenings and weekends;

• The plan will be paid for by abolishing the non-dom tax status.

AI, Tech and Life Sciences

NEW: At ABPI’s annual conference in April 2024, shadow Minister for Science, Research & Innovation Chi Onwurah said that implementing the O’Shaughnessy review recommendations would be a top priority for Labour’s first 100 day’s in Government.

Labour’s Life Sciences sector plan

In January 2023, Labour trailed its Life Sciences Sector Plan. The party subsequently published A Prescription for Growth to coincide with the party’s Business Conference in February 2024. The Key action points from the plan include the following:

Labour’s Industrial Strategy

• Bolster the Life Sciences Council and ensure its decisions are acted upon by having it report directly into the Industrial Strategy Council.
• Place life sciences and innovation directly under the Health Secretary’s ministerial responsibilities.

A long-term approach to public R&D funding

• Create a more certain funding environment by setting 10-year budgets for key R&D institutions.

Harnessing data

• Ensure proper federation of data sets, with a single access point for researchers to use data from all our genomic resources (UK Biobank, OFH, GEL, NIHR Bioresource)

Increasing access to finance

• Empower the British Business Bank (BBB) with a more ambitious remit focused on providing growth capital, enabling regional development, and streamlining support offerings for SMEs. 

Improving the business environment

• Maintain the current structure of R&D tax credits over the next parliament.

Modernising the regulatory regime

• Create a Regulatory Innovation Office (RIO) to hold regulators accountable for driving innovation where appropriate and for delays that are holding back innovation.

Planning reform to support the life sciences industry

• Bring laboratory clusters within the scope of the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Regime in England.
• Create new National Development Management Policies tilting the scales in favour of new lab space in England’s planning system. 

Ensuring the NHS is supporting innovation to improve health outcomes

• Develop a comprehensive innovation and adoption strategy in England.

IP/ Trade

• Publish a trade strategy which sets out clear priorities for vital growth sectors like life sciences.
• Ensure reciprocal levels of IP protection in countries with which the UK trades while maintaining continued support of the WTO’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS).

At the Labour Party Conference in September 2022, Wes Streeting said genomics and data will be at the heart of Labour’s 10-year plan for change and modernisation.

Labour’s Mission for Public Services document outlined plans to:

• Introduce a new mechanism for accountability of commissioners so they fulfil obligations to “foster and deploy research and innovations”.

• Reform to the incentives structure so new technologies are adopted quickly, and older options are phased out;

• Work with CQC to ensure regulation involves the quick adoption of new technology;

• Drive interoperability by making the NHS App a one-stop shop for health information;

• Set out a centralised direction for future procurement of data systems;

• Implement a national approach to costing for industry clinical trials;

• Bring together clinical trial registries to create standing national registries accessible to the public.

In an August 2023 press release, Labour pledged to reduce red tape in adopting new technology for the NHS by:

• Allowing the NHS to bulk buy the latest technology, so innovators are not forced to sell into individual NHS trusts;

• Cutting red tape that requires new technology to be re-evaluated by several different bodies;

• Joining up data records makes recruiting patients to trials for new medicines and technologies easier and quicker.

In a September 2023 press release, Labour laid out how it would use its industrial strategy to support the life sciences industry:

• Reforming procurement and reducing unnecessary bureaucracy to speed up the adoption of new innovation;

• Ensuring cross-border cooperation between scientists and universities to unlock the potential of our scientific community (much of which will be delivered by our renewed association with Horizon Europe);

• Reforming the planning system to unlock investment in infrastructure needed for high-growth sectors.

According to Labourlist, Labour’s policy agenda includes the following on the life sciences:

• Speed up treatment, harnessing life sciences and technology to reduce preventable illness.

• More transparent and less variable process for research. Give everyone the opportunity to participate in research if they want to. Bring together existing clinical trials registries to create standing national registries, making sure signing up is easy and working towards more data-enabled recruitment, including through the NHS app.

• Develop a comprehensive innovation and adoption strategy

• Train the workforce needed to do clinical trials

The article also incorporated policies on health data:

• Improve data sharing and portability in health and care.

• Guarantee patients that their health data will be safeguarded and used ethically.

• Make the NHS App a one-stop shop for health information, with all health and care providers publishing into it but all the data owned by the patient.

• Set a clearer, centralised direction for future procurement of data systems

There was mention of strengthening global health systems by working with international health organisations, such as the World Health Organisation and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. Labour would focus on establishing a new international mechanism to rapidly produce and distribute vaccines, share technology, knowledge and skills and build the infrastructure needed to deliver it.

In October 2023, Shadow Science Secretary Peter Kyle promised 10-year research and development funding settlements to support innovation with more “certainty” and “long-term partnerships” than under the Tories.

In October 2023, the Party announced an extra £171 million per year for a ‘Fit For The Future Fund’, which will be used to purchase the latest technology and replace outdated equipment.

In April 2024, Labour said they would digitise the NHS red book parents use for their children’s medical records. Under the party’s plans, parents and the NHS would be able to see if children are behind on their jabs or check-ups through a new digital record, with automatic notifications to prompt them to book appointments.

The same month, Labour announced a partnership with Virgin Media O2 and the Supporting Children with Diabetes charity which would see children from deprived backgrounds given access to new glucose monitors. The NHS will identify children with type 1 diabetes who are not using modern glucose monitors and direct them to the SDC charity so they can provide them with a smartphone donated by Virgin Media O2.

A leaked document to LabourList suggests an amendment to Labour’s current draft policy platform will say Labour would take advantage of its world-class life sciences sector, university strength and “unique” large NHS dataset to adopt new innovations and technology faster. “We will develop a comprehensive innovation and adoption strategy, working with industry, patients and ICSs”.

NHS reform

Labour’s Mission for Public Services document outlined plans to:

• Use spare capacity in the independent sector to treat patients and reduce waiting lists.

In a letter to NHS Confederation Chief Executive Matthew Taylor and NHS Providers Chief Executive Sir Julian Hartley, Wes Streeting said Labour would introduce a stricter system regulating NHS management after Lucy Letby’s murders.

Contained in the policy platform published by LabourList in October 2023 were the following pledges:

• Ensure ICSs are empowered to act as a bulwark against privatisation alongside NHS England and the Department for Health and Social Care

• Make the NHS the preferred provider of commissioned healthcare services and will end the reliance on outsourcing and cronyism

• End the two-tier system that currently sees patients paying to go private or waiting for years in pain for planned NHS treatment

• Use spare capacity in the independent sector to treat NHS patients and bring waiting lists down

• Introduce a ten-year plan for change and modernisation of the NHS

• Ensure that the NHS has the accessible buildings, modern equipment and cutting-edge technology

• In Labour conference fringe events, Mr Streeting suggested that he would encourage more “integration and collaboration” and enable private companies to roll out their products throughout the NHS, as opposed to implementing them trust by trust.

In his speech to the NHS Providers Conference in November 2022, Mr Streeting pledged to introduce performance league tables to encourage greater transparency and drive improvements in underperforming services.  

In January 2024, shadow Health Minister Karin Smyth, who leads on health reform for Labour, delivered a keynote speech outlining Labour’s plan for tackling NHS waste.

In her speech, Smyth identified £10 billion of spending as examples of ways in which the Government could better invest funds. Examples of waste identified by Labour include:

• £1.7 billion cost of hospital beds for patients who are well enough to leave but cannot because there is no care available in the community.
• £3.5 billion paid to recruitment agencies.
• £626 million spent by the Department of Health and Social Care on management consultants.
• £32 million value of the pagers NHS staff use.
• £1 billion of savings the NHS itself says is available through bulk-buying equipment at a cheaper rate.

Smyth also pointed to red tape which prevents health visitors from administering routine vaccines for children and propose cost-free reforms which would allow them to do so – to help tackle the measles outbreak.

In April 2024, Reeves pledged to fund the party’s NHS and school breakfast club policies by tackling tax dodgers, a move she says will raise £5.1 billion a year. The party says its “invest-to-save plan” will cost £550 million a year in upfront costs — but that the extra revenue will cover its £2 billion pledge to boost NHS spending and extend school breakfast clubs if it wins the election.

According to LabourList, several changes are proposed in a section on the NHS. One highlights that integrated care systems (ICSs) will be “empowered to act as a bulwark against privatisation” and says Labour would make the NHS “the preferred provider of commissioned healthcare services”.

Miscellaneous

In March 2023 Sir Keir Starmer pledged to give MPs a free vote on legalising assisted dying if Labour wins the UK general election.

Asked by ITV News whether a Labour Government would hold a vote on the matter within its first five years in office, he said: “Oh yes, definitely.” It is the first time Starmer has explicitly committed to a vote happening under a Labour Government.