Starmer sidesteps questions on how Labour would fund NHS reform

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer on Monday sidestepped questions over how his party plans to fund its wide ranging reforms to England’s health service, as he outlined his plans to build an NHS “fit for the future”.

Starmer warned that the NHS would not survive “five more years of Tory government”, arguing that a Labour administration would get the health service “back on its feet” by meeting within five years long-missed targets for the time people waited for ambulances and hospital treatment, and halving the gap in healthy life expectancy between different regions.

The Labour leader, speaking in Braintree, Essex, promised to outline a comprehensive breakdown of funding for his NHS plan “before the election”. He said he would make decisions based “on a full appreciation” of the reality of the challenges facing the health service and the state of public finances.

Challenged repeatedly during the press conference on whether a Labour government would increase NHS spending and the source of any additional funding, Starmer said that money was “important but it’s not all about money”.

“What I am setting out today is that change and reform plays a hugely important part,” he said. Suggesting science and innovation could transform healthcare, he added: “Technology can be the revolution, technology can do what money can’t do”.

He argued that it was “wrong” to suggest Labour had not clarified where funding was going to come from, pointing out that a commitment to increase training places for doctors and nurses would be funded by the scrapping of “non-dom” tax status — the mechanism through which foreign residents can avoid paying tax on their overseas earnings. Labour officials believe the move could raise upwards of £3bn. 

Improving the NHS is one of the party’s five key pledges to the electorate ahead of the election, which is expected next year. Other pledges include making British streets safe and ensuring that the UK has the highest growth of any G7 country.

Starmer’s announcement came as recent polling has given Labour a double-digit lead following a bruising set of local election results for the ruling Conservative party.

According to YouGov, 43 per cent of those recently polled would back Labour compared with 25 per cent who would support the Tories.

Starmer suggested Labour would put far more focus on out-of-hospital care as part of a drive to prevent disease or identify it at an earlier, more treatable stage. Additional GPs would be trained and more people would be seen in the community rather than in hospital when it was often “too late” to secure a good outcome, he suggested.

Starmer sketched an expansive vision of the elements needed to keep people fit, saying: “We must move from a mindset that views health as all about sickness.” Giving working people better employment rights, providing breakfast clubs for primary school children and decent homes, and regulating the water industry were “all health policies”, he argued.

Starmer also promised to “take on the social media companies who push dangerous misogyny on our kids” and to set a watershed for advertisements for vaping, junk food and sugary snacks to ensure they “cannot be advertised to our children”, he said.

Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, which represents health organisations, praised Labour’s “constructive” vision but added: “[W]e need to see specifics on what a boost to funding would look like.”

He welcomed Starmer’s commitment to shift more care out of hospital and into the community but added that “we need to understand how Labour would achieve — and fund — such a move”, with more details needed on the party’s plans for social care.

Nigel Edwards, chief executive of the Nuffield Trust think-tank, said the plans were “welcome but extremely ambitious”. Delivering them would require “time, staff and more long-term funding than Labour have so far pledged”, he warned.