Rishi Sunak admitted he had failed to keep his promise to cut medical waiting lists.
The prime minister made this one of the important pledges by which his ability would be judged upon taking office. But this grand pledge was downgraded late last year, with England’s situation actually deteriorating in many ways, before Mr Sunak admitted failure on Monday.
Asked about efforts to reduce NHS waiting lists in an interview with Piers Morgan on Talk TV, Mr Sunak said: “We are not making enough progress.” Asked if that meant it had failed, the Prime Minister replied: “Yes, it has failed.”
Labour’s Wes Streeting, shadow minister for Heath, said: “Rishi Sunak has finally admitted what has been obvious to everyone else for years: the Conservatives have failed on the NHS. ” he said.
“If Mr Sunak fails, Mr Labor will succeed in getting the NHS back on its feet. We have done it before and we will do it again. Add another 2 million night and weekend bookings and reduce waiting lists. The cost will be covered by abolishing non-Dom tax status.”
In October, it was revealed that the number of people in England waiting more than 18 months for NHS treatment is rising. Data analyzed by the PA media news agency last month suggested that waiting lists in England, despite falling recently, are still higher than when Mr Sunak’s pledge was made.
As of January 2023, there were 7.21 million treatments outstanding on the list, while NHS England figures for November showed 7.61 million treatments had yet to be carried out.
Many NHS workers have experienced significant real pay cuts under the Conservative government and are exercising their right to industrial action to secure better conditions.
Unions have consistently argued that a strike could be avoided if ministers offered a better pay deal. And government ministers, after months of publicly insisting they would not do so, finally privately acknowledged the need to do so.
Health leaders warned Mr Sunak in December that prolonging the industrial action would make it nearly impossible to deliver on his promises. Nevertheless, Sunak tried to blame his failures on the striking workers.
Asked by TalkTV on Monday about growing waiting lists in the UK, Mr Sunak replied: And what I like to say to people is, “Look, we’ve invested record amounts in the NHS. We’ve increased the number of doctors, nurses, scanners.” All of this means the NHS is doing more today than ever before. But industrial action had an impact. ”
Ms Morgan also told Mr Sunak about her experience with her 79-year-old mother, who was in NHS care after she suffered a heart attack three months ago. The broadcaster said that although his mother was taken to hospital by ambulance, she waited on a trolley in an A&E corridor for nearly seven hours before being seen, and likened the scene to a “war zone”.
The Prime Minister said the figures were “shocking” and that A&E performance and ambulance waiting times were “not good enough”.
But he denied that the Conservatives had bankrupted the NHS since 2010, citing backlogs caused by the coronavirus pandemic. “There’s no getting away from it. When we shut down the country with the NHS for the better part of two years, it affected everything after that. And we just need to recognize that reality,” he said. I did.
During the interview, Mr Sunak also accepted a £1,000 bet with Mr Morgan that deportation flights to Rwanda would take place before the next general election, expected in the autumn.
He had previously set a target to send people who arrived in the UK by irregular routes, including those crossing the Channel in small boats, to the East African country by spring.
Britain is paying Rwanda £240m under the ‘Stop the Ships’ plan, another of Mr Sunak’s five key pledges, and ministers plan to pay a further £50m next year. be. But no one has yet been removed following a legal challenge that saw the Supreme Court rule last year that the plan was illegal.
Mr Sunak is trying to reinstate the policy by passing legislation that would classify Rwanda as a safe country and ratifying a new treaty with Kigali. The Rwanda Bill is moving through the House of Lords.
After shaking Morgan’s hand over the terms of the Rwanda bet, Sunak said: I work incredibly hard to get people on planes. ”
The full interview will be aired on Piers Morgan’s Uncensored YouTube channel on Monday at 2pm and on TalkTV at 8pm.
