Customize Consent Preferences

We use cookies to help you navigate efficiently and perform certain functions. You will find detailed information about all cookies under each consent category below.

The cookies that are categorized as "Necessary" are stored on your browser as they are essential for enabling the basic functionalities of the site. ... 

Always Active

Necessary cookies are required to enable the basic features of this site, such as providing secure log-in or adjusting your consent preferences. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable data.

No cookies to display.

Functional cookies help perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collecting feedback, and other third-party features.

No cookies to display.

Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics such as the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.

No cookies to display.

Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.

No cookies to display.

Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with customized advertisements based on the pages you visited previously and to analyze the effectiveness of the ad campaigns.

No cookies to display.

NHS in ‘last-chance saloon’, says former health secretary Alan Milburn

Alan Milburn, pictured in 2016: ‘People have got to stop thinking that the answer to the NHS problem is simply more and more money.’ Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

Alan Milburn, pictured in 2016: ‘People have got to stop thinking that the answer to the NHS problem is simply more and more money.’ Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

NHS in ‘last-chance saloon’, says former health secretary Alan Milburn

Milburn set to take senior health department role and says crisis is ‘million times worse’ than when he was in office

The NHS is “drinking in the last-chance saloon” and needs to change, the former health secretary Alan Milburn has said as he prepares to take up a senior role in the Department of Health.

Milburn, who brought about radical changes, such as the introduction of NHS foundation trusts, when he was a minister for Tony Blair, called for “cultural change” in the health service and said “big reforms will be needed to make it fit for the future”.

“People have got to stop thinking that the answer to the NHS problem is simply more and more money,” the former Darlington MP said in a paywalled interview with the Times, adding that the crisis in the NHS was “a million times worse” than when he was in office.

“The NHS is in the worst state I’ve ever seen and I’ve been around health policy now for 30 years. I genuinely think it’s drinking in the last-chance saloon.”

The Guardian revealed in October that Milburn was being given a lead role in the running of Wes Streeting’s health department, reigniting the row over Labour figures with private interests having access to the government.

On Saturday, Streeting confirmed Milburn’s appointment as lead non-executive director of the department, praising him for his previous changes “which helped deliver the shortest waiting times and highest patient satisfaction in the history of the NHS” and welcoming his “advice on turning the NHS around once again”.

The NHS was given £22.6bn of extra funding in the budget.

“When you put that amount of money in, you better make sure that every pound of it is working to produce better outcomes for patients,” Milburn said, adding that the prime minister agreed with him. “Keir [Starmer] has got religion on public-service reform,” he said.

Streeting would go “further and faster” than New Labour had under Blair, Milburn said, because delivering on the NHS was “the acid test for this government”.

“The NHS has got to be weaned off the ‘more, more, more’ culture, and it’s got to recognise that if you’re going to do big dollops of resources, then that has got to be matched by a massive dose of reform.”

Linking money to change was “the only game in town, because otherwise in the end what will happen is we’ll end up breaking the NHS on the mantra of ‘It’s always got to be more, more, more’”.

He said there was a “different fiscal climate” now compared with when he was health secretary between 1999 and 2003. “If you’ve broadly got less resourcing than then, you’ve got to do more reforming than then.”

Milburn was an MP from 1992 to 2010. Between 2012 and 2017, he chaired the social mobility commission and since 2015 he has been the chancellor of Lancaster University.

Announcing his appointment on Saturday, the department confirmed that “due to the requirements of the role” Milburn was “appointed directly by the secretary of state”.

Streeting said the government had inherited “a broken health service”. Building “an NHS fit for the future” was one of Labour’s five missions laid out in its election manifesto.

The party promised to cut waiting times by offering 40,000 more appointments every week, doubling the number of cancer scanners, employing 8,500 additional mental health staff, forming a new “dentistry rescue” plan and bringing back “the family doctor”.

Explore more on these topics

  • NHS
  • Health
  • Health policy
  • Public services policy
  • Labour
  • news
Share

Reuse this content

Source

Leave a Comment