Labour's shadow health boss Wes Streeting has slammed the government's handling of the National Health Service as it was revealed that 34,000 people across Merseyside are waiting for a cancer scan.
Mr Streeting was in Merseyside yesterday to visit Clatterbridge Cancer Hospitals on both sides of the river. The shadow front bencher knows how important early diagnosis is after recovering from kidney cancer last year.
The Ilford North MP said he was deeply concerned at the waiting lists in Merseyside, a region that already suffers with poor health outcomes related to a range of social factors and long-term health issues in the population.
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Speaking to the ECHO, he said: "I want to be the country's next health and social care secretary and part of the job is seeing what's happening on the front line. Obviously we talk a lot about what's going wrong with the NHS but we also want to talk about all the great work going on in the health service and we saw that at both Clatterbridge sites today.
"Cancer affects me very differently now after my own experiences. I was very lucky because I was diagnosed early because of a kidney stone. From the moment I was diagnosed the NHS kicked in to gear with the most remarkable machine. But the key thing is early diagnosis and one of the things Merseyside is struggling with right now is delayed diagnosis. We have 34,000 people across this region waiting for tests that help detect cancer and those are just the people waiting for tests, there will be an even greater number out in the community.
"Whether its on cancer or other treatments, it cannot be right that our health outcomes are determined by the conditions we are living in, income levels, housing - there are so many societal drivers of those health inequalities. This is why the government's levelling up agenda rings hollow for me. How can you claim you are levelling up when places like Liverpool are still experiencing enormous health inequalities."
Mr Streeting, seen as a rising star of the Labour front bench, was invited to Merseyside by Wirral South MP Alison McGovern. He did so at a time when Labour have a comfortable poll lead and are considered to be on an election footing.
Speaking about the health plans for a future Labour government, he added: "If you are not lifting children out of poverty then you aren't levelling up, if you are not reducing some of the grotesque health inequalities in the country then you are not levelling up.
"I think levelling up is a Labour aim that cannot be achieved through Conservative means. That's why we need a Labour government, when we were in government we were cutting waiting times, we had the highest patient satisfaction ratings in the NHS's history. Over the course of 12 years of Conservative government we have the complete reverse of those things."
"When you go to places like Clatterbridge you meet the most amazing staff. The public know NHS staff are not to blame, they know it is because of more than a decade of Conservative underinvestment that has led to the NHS being in what I would argue is the worst state since it was created."
Mr Streeting received some criticism earlier this year when he said that as health secretary he would be prepared to use private health providers to help bring down NHS waiting lists. He stood by that comment today but insisted he was firmly against any privatisation of the health service itself.
He told the ECHO: "Nothing makes my blood boil more than being accused of wanting more privatisation in the NHS. I fundamentally believe in the NHS as a public service, publicly funded, free at the point of use. I worry about an over-reliance on the private sector, partly because its expensive and also because there are concerns about patient safety compared with the NHS.
"What I was honest about is the fact that we've got the largest backlong in NHS history, there is capacity in the private sector and what I see in this country at the moment is a two-tier system, where people can afford to go private and those who can't are forced to wait longer.
"I'm not prepared to sit by and watch working class people wait longer, while wealthier people jump the queue. So if there is capacity in the private sector, we will pay as the state for people to get access to healthcare faster as a short term measure. In the longer term I want to make the NHS so good that people never feel like they have to go private and to build the capacity back into the NHS so that the NHS never has to pay for people to go private either. I just want to pull every lever available to me to get that backlog down."
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