People, quite rightly, have high expectations on health from a Labour Government. That’s a strength for our party and a challenge we have to meet. The pace of reform sometimes seems frustratingly slow, but we are making real strides forward in creating the NHS our nation needs.
In our first two years we put in place the structural changes the NHS needed. We abolished the Tories’ hated internal market and have now ended Compulsory Competitive Tendering. We established the first independent inspections of the NHS through the Commission for Health Improvement. And in the National Institute of Clinical Excellence, we have the means for making rational decisions on clinically-effective and cost-effective treatments.
On these sound foundations we were able last year to announce the NHS Plan, putting in the investment and reform to transform the care patients receive. It will take time but, after decades of under-investment and failed reforms, the NHS is now beginning to see the benefits of a Labour Government.
Labour has doubled the historic growth rate in spending on the NHS from three percent a year to six percent.
Our waiting list pledge is being delivered. Waiting lists are down by more than 100,000 since Labour came to office. Last year the NHS carried out 600,000 more routine operations, saw 680,000 more outpatients and dealt with 290,000 more emergency admissions. Services for patients are beginning to show improvements. Take cancer, for example. We now have the first ever national cancer treatment standards, alongside an extra £280 million to improve cancer services next year, rising to an extra £570 million by 2003/4. The breast screening programme now has the new resources and equipment needed to extend the screening programme this year to women aged 65 to 70.
Through new national cancer networks, the so-called Cancer Collaboratives, new ways of working mean waiting times for cancer treatment are coming down. No-one should now wait more than two weeks to see a cancer specialist having been urgently referred by a GP. By the end of the year, the maximum waiting time from urgent referral to the start of treatment will be one month for children’s cancers, testicular cancer and acute leukaemia. And step-by-step we are reducing waiting times for all cancers.
As well as extra resources, we’re tackling the postcode lottery which meant some life-saving drugs were available in some parts of the country but not in others.
There are now more than 16,000 extra nurses working in the NHS than in 1997 – and they’re able to do more: prescribing medicines, carrying out procedures, controlling their own budgets, making sure cleaning companies do the job right first time. And there are more than 5,000 extra hospital and family doctors, too.
Alongside the extra staff we have new buildings and more beds. We’re now busy with the biggest hospital building programme in the history of the NHS – building new hospitals, new specialist treatment centres, getting £1 billion of new investment into primary care, especially in deprived communities. For the first time in 40 years the number of general and acute hospital beds is rising rather than falling.
We’ve got a long way to go on health. At the last election we asked people to vote Labour to help us save the NHS. They did and we did. At the next election, we should be asking the people for a mandate to transform the health service: shaped around the patient, with more staff and new ways of working, modern buildings and state-of-the art equipment, and a brand new culture of openness and transparency.
I know people expect us to do more – and that’s precisely why we are putting so much effort into implementing the NHS Plan. With the scale of resources we’re now investing, the radical reforms underway and the brilliant dedication of health service staff, the NHS is unstoppable.