I’ll cut deal to end doctors’ strike, says Labour’s Wes Streeting as he vows crackdown on Brits taking mick on benefits
WES Streeting has declared he is confident he can “cut a deal” to end the junior doctors strike if Labour are elected next week.
Labour’s health chief admitted there will have to be “movement on pay” to get the medics back to their hospital wards.
He also hit out at people who “take the mick” on benefits and promised Labour will not “go soft” on welfare in No10.
In a punchy interview with The Sun on Sunday, the shadow health secretary said the NHS is “broken” and will not be fixed by simply pouring more cash in.
Junior doctors are in the middle of their ELEVENTH strike — a row which has been blamed for increasing already bulging waiting lists.
Mr Streeting said: “I don’t think this round of strikes is achieving anything aside from causing enormous inconvenience for patients who are already waiting too long, and leaving junior doctors out of pocket out on picket lines.
“But I really feel confident that if we have a Labour government a week today that I will be able to pick up the phone immediately to the junior doctors, get talks up and running as a matter of urgency, and see off the threat of future strike action.
“And I’m particularly pleased that we’ve seen a deal cut in Wales. That gives me confidence that we can cut a deal in England.”
Junior doctors have demanded a 35 per cent pay rise in England.
But doctors in Wales called off their action on Friday after accepting a 12.4 per cent pay deal.
Acknowledging he will have to get the cheque book out, he added: “I know there is going to need to be movement on pay.”
Mr Streeting was speaking while in Morecambe, Lancs, to support Lizzi Collinge’s bid to win the seat there for Labour on Thursday for the first time since 2010.
If the polls are right then Labour are set to waltz into No10 with the biggest landslide in 100 years.
But as he tucked into his haddock, chips and mushy peas, Mr Streeting was keen to play down talk of a Labour ‘supermajority’.
It is “nonsense” he insists, but “devastatingly effective” at encouraging voters to think “they can put their feet up at home” or and vote Lib Dem or Green.
But all the pundits reckon Sir Keir Starmer is heading for No10 with an eye-watering majority.
And Mr Streeting will be heading for the health department — famously one of the toughest gigs in Government.
He admits the scale of the challenge is huge.
He said: “Every part of the NHS is broken, and we need to fix it. And that’s not just a question of more money. It’s about where the money is spent.”
Labour will stop treating the NHS as a holy cow and use private providers to clear the backlog.
He went on to add: “If the NHS is sniffy about using spare capacity in the private sector, we end up with a situation where people are going blind — literally going blind — waiting for care.
“The problem with the worship of the NHS as a national religion is that people are derided as heretics if they have the courage to speak out about what’s wrong.
“You end up with an NHS culture that if you can’t criticise its failings on patient safety, you end up with scandals like the maternity scandal in Nottingham or the contaminated blood scandal.
“We have to be honest about the shortcomings of the NHS if you’re going to have any hope of saving it.”
Get back to work
One of the biggest challenges is how to get the 2.83 million people signed off on the sick back to work.
Mr Streeting claims he will be able to make a hefty dent by cutting waiting lists.
But economists have accused him of failing to come clean on exactly how much cash this will require.
On welfare, he said Labour will crack down on those who “take the mick” by staying on benefits when they could work.
He said: “I come from a family where the welfare system put food in the fridge and money in an electric metre. And I would not be here today without the support of the social security system, so I understand its value as both a safety net and a springboard.
“I also know from growing up on the council of state that there are people who take the mick.
“I’ve got as much tolerance for people who are taking the mick out of welfare as I’ve got the Tories who are keeping people on NHS waiting lists. So we are not going to go soft on people who could work, but are choosing not to.”
He said Labour would sanction people who can work but refuse to.
But it is unclear if they will match the Tory pledge to axe benefits for people refusing to get a job after a year if they are fit to work.
With Labour set for a first election win since 2005, some of the frontbench are starting to play class war.
David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, said the Tories are of the “wrong class” to rule and compared them to the dying days of the Empire in India.
Mr Streeting dismisses it as just the “rough and tumble” of the campaign and says Tories who complain are “clutching their pearls”.
Racist slur
But he hit out at Nigel Farage, whose party Reform UK has been rocked by a racism scandal after one of its campaigners was caught calling the PM a racist slur.
Mr Farage says the man is an actor and it was a set-up.
But Mr Streeting said: “I think they have clearly got a massive problem with racism. I think that they’ve had documented problems during this campaign with racists in their ranks. And I think they’ve got to clean up their act.”
He accused Mr Farage of saying things about “Muslim minorities that are deeply prejudiced”, adding: “I think some things you said about Muslims would qualify as racism.”
Mr Farage has always denied being racist. On telly on Friday night he said “I’ve done more to drive the far right out of British politics than anybody else alive.”
Mr Streeting is tipped to be a future Labour leader one day.
He loathes Jeremy Corbyn nearly as much as he loves Tony Blair. He says the Labour Party had a “near death experience” under Corbynistas.
But now things are different.
Sir Tony is back in the fold — even giving a pep talk to staff at Labour HQ a couple of days ago.
Going all misty-eyed, he said: “It was for me it was just it was genuinely a wonderful moment to witness this brilliant team of Labour staff being addressed by Labour’s most electorally successful leader.”
Will Sir Keir do one better and land Labour with the biggest majority of modern times?
Only five days to find out.