That is the letter ex-Well being Secretary Wes Streeting despatched to Sir Keir Starmer as Labour’s management disaster exploded
The Specific’ Martyn Brown reacts to Wes Streeting resignation
In a damning resignation letter to the Prime Minister, Wes Streeting stated: “The place we’d like imaginative and prescient, we’ve a vacuum. The place we’d like course, we’ve drift. This was underscored by your speech on Monday. Leaders take duty, however too usually that has meant different individuals falling on their swords. You additionally must take heed to your colleagues, together with backbenchers, and the heavy-handed strategy to dissenting voices diminishes our politics.”
That is the prolonged letter to the Prime Minister in full: “Expensive Prime Minister. The outcomes are in and I’m happy to report that I’ve delivered towards the formidable targets you set for me after I turned your Secretary of State for Well being and Social Care. Right this moment’s figures verify that we surpassed our ready instances goal regardless of strikes, and that ready lists fell by 110,000 in March – the largest month-to-month drop exterior of Covid since 2008 – that means that we’re on observe to attain the quickest enchancment in NHS ready instances in historical past.
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Ex well being secretary Wes Streeting (Picture: Getty)
The one query that issues in authorities is whether or not we depart our successors a greater state of affairs than we inherited. Ambulance response instances for coronary heart assaults and strokes at the moment are the quickest in 5 years. A&E ready instances are bettering, with four-hour ready figures additionally the perfect in 5 years. We’ve recruited 2,000 extra GPs and satisfaction has risen from 60 per cent to 74.5 per cent since we got here to workplace. We hit our goal of recruiting 8,500 psychological well being workers three years early. We’ve achieved this on the similar as balancing the books for the primary time in 9 years and smashing the two per cent NHS productiveness goal by reaching 2.8 per cent, which suggests the funding we’re placing in goes additional and that the general public can have higher confidence that their cash is being well-spent.
None of this could have been achieved with out the good management crew of ministers, officers, and particular advisers we’ve established within the Division of Well being and Social Care and the NHS – fantastically led by Samantha Jones and Sir Jim Mackey, who has been a knight in shining armour and an excellent chief of 1.5 million workers upon whom all this success relies upon.
The Nationwide Well being Service is the embodiment of all that’s finest about Britain and our values. Because of our Labour authorities, it’s on the highway to restoration: tons accomplished, however a lot extra to do.
These are all good causes for me to stay in put up, however as you recognize from our dialog earlier this week, having misplaced confidence in your management, I’ve concluded that it will be dishonourable and unprincipled to take action.
Final week’s election outcomes have been unprecedented – each by way of the dimensions of the defeat and the results of that failure. For the primary time in our nation’s historical past, nationalists are in energy in each nook of the UK – together with a harmful English nationalism represented by Nigel Farage and Reform UK. This represents each an existential risk to the longer term integrity of the UK, however Reform UK additionally characterize a risk to the values and beliefs which have made this nation nice. Progressives throughout our nation perceive this risk and our duty to confront it, however they’re more and more dropping religion that the Labour Get together is able to rising to our historic duty of defeating racism and providing hope that Britain’s finest days lie forward by social democracy.
There isn’t any doubt that the unpopularity of this Authorities was a serious and customary think about our defeats throughout England, Scotland and Wales. Good Labour individuals misplaced by no fault of their very own. There are a lot of causes we may level to: from particular person errors on coverage like the choice to chop the winter gasoline allowance to the ‘island of strangers’ speech, all of which have left the nation not realizing who we’re or what we actually stand for.
You may have many nice strengths that I love. You led our celebration to a victory few thought doable in 2024 and I used to be proud to struggle alongside you within the trenches of that marketing campaign. You may have proven braveness and statesmanship on the world stage – not least in conserving Britain out of the battle in Iran.
Half one in every of Wes Streeting’s letter (Picture: Wes Streeting)
Wes Streeting’s letter (Picture: Wes Streeting)
However the place we’d like imaginative and prescient, we’ve a vacuum. The place we’d like course, we’ve drift. This was underscored by your speech on Monday. Leaders take duty, however too usually that has meant different individuals falling on their swords. You additionally must take heed to your colleagues, together with backbenchers, and the heavy-handed strategy to dissenting voices diminishes our politics.
As a member of your authorities, I do know higher than most that governing is difficult. It needs to be, as a result of it issues. There are monumental challenges going through this nation. For the primary time in our historical past the subsequent technology faces a worse inheritance than the final. We’ve wars raging in Europe and the Center East which can be making our challenges more durable, not simpler. We’re within the foothills of a technological industrial revolution that has big implications for each facet of our lives – not least the way forward for work. It isn’t clear whether or not democracy or tyranny will outline the twenty first century. After the monetary disaster, austerity, the catastrophe of Brexit, Liz Truss, the covid pandemic, the battle in Ukraine and now the battle in Iran, the nation must imagine once more that issues could be higher than this and that politics is a part of the reply, not the supply of the issue. These are huge challenges that require a daring imaginative and prescient and larger options than we’re providing.
It’s now clear that you’ll not lead the Labour Get together into the subsequent common election and that Labour MPs and Labour Unions need the talk about what comes subsequent to be a battle of concepts, not of personalities or petty factionalism. It must be broad, and it wants the absolute best discipline of candidates. I assist that strategy and I hope that you’ll facilitate this.
Serving as your Secretary of State for Well being and Social Care has been the best pleasure of my life and, no matter our variations this week, I stay really grateful to you for the chance to serve and I’m deeply saddened to be leaving authorities on this means.
Yours sincerely,
The Rt Hon Wes Streeting MP
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