sherlock
Well-known member
7.48 million people in December 2024, 7.46 million in February 2025.
It's staggeringly slow progress in reality.
Starmer - Britain's Trump
- Thread starter redrobbo
- Start date
It's staggeringly slow progress in reality.
From April there are activity caps so Trusts won't get paid for doing additional work to bring waiting lists down. Any reduction of the waiting lists will have to be done privately.
It was easy to reduce waiting lists though because the previous years have had strikes causing reduction in activity (and increases to the waiting lists). Trusts have been incentivised via the "Elective Recovery Fund" to do additional activity.
From April the caps in place means there will be no waiting list reductions and cost savings are going into overdrive instead. Anyone that leaves their job will not be replaced unless it is critical. It is a shrinking of the NHS. It's very similar to the coalition days.
Cynically I think they will be allowing the waiting lists to increase so that in the run up to the next General Election they can switch targets to waiting list reduction again and show them coming down again.
NHS England is made up of multiple organisations. NHS Digital is part of that and so is Health Education England. I don't think there will be any duplication there with the DHSC and both organisations will still be needed. The rest will have some crossover but not enough that it will mean getting rid of everyone.
As someone who has to deal with NHS England regularly the problem is usually that they do not understand our job so they ask for things that can't be delivered and they are too understaffed to handle the information that we provide to them. I don't imagine that DHSC will be any different and if anything will be less knowledgeable about our day to day operations and fewer people means they are less able to do what needs to be done.
During the last wave of austerity the coalition thought they could improve efficiency by getting rid of all the managers and admin. It obviously didn't work because a lot of it still needs doing so you end up with doctors, nurses, AHPs etc not seeing patients because they are spending their time doing admin and attending meetings. It is not more efficient to have a doctor do their own notes. It is cheaper. There is a big difference between cheaper and efficient and I fear that once again we're going to be focusing on cheaper. It might be cheaper but we get worse value from it.
Effective leadership and management is important and the NHS already has a much smaller management to staff ratio than a private organisation has. I've seen first hand that managers that are already overstretched spend all of their time on operationally making sure that shifts are covered and clinics/lists aren't cancelled and not enough time on managing people and performance.
BlindBoyGrunt
Well-known member
Where and when did Keir Starmer make this claim? I can't find reference to it anywhere, nor can I find evidence that waiting lists have fallen in five consecutive months. The IFS says that elective waiting list targets have been missed and that some waiting lists have grown substantially.
If this claim was made could it be relying on selective data?
Boro.Fur
Well-known member
The same could be said of any political party past, present or future and in any country around the world. Corbyn's party didn't fit everyone's politics perfectly. Nor did Milliband's, nor Brown's, nor Blair's, nor Smith's, nor Kinnock's.
It just comes across as another attack on Starmer for the sake of it.
And being competent and credible was all that was needed to beat the Tories in 2017 and 2019 but it didn't happen.
The race has been run and it's been won by Labour. They get 5 years to sort out a clusterfcuk. Moving away from the status quo doesn't happen overnight.
SmallTown
Well-known member
Apperently in a speech this morning.
Of course they wouldn't fit everyone perfectly but a lot more people would choose a Corbyn manifesto over a Starmer one. It's not an attack on Starmer. I jsut disagree that Labour should be a centrist party.
Being competent and credible would have been nowhere near enough in 2017 or 2019. Tories had a big majority and went into that 2017 election to increase it but Corbyn's manifesto was very popular and they did a lot better than expected (despite having his own party working against him). 2019 was a single issue election and Corbyn wouldn't commit to anything but Starmer would have done and lost comfortably.
I disagree that moving away from the status quo doesn't happen over night. You have to make the move immediately. Change takes time but you have to actually start. So far Labour haven't even looked at changing course. They have barely applied the brakes.
I don't agree with the OP of this thread that Starmer is Trump-like but all the talk about reducing the size of the state like he has referenced today, all the welfare cuts, focus on deregulation, growth and departmental cuts are very much a David Cameron type of government. I don't know how anyone that could claim to be left-leaning in any way could think that all of this austerity (despite Starmer's claims that "there will be no return to austerity") is what is best for the majority. Starmer is either a right of centre politician that has hidden it well to be elected as leader of a party he doesn't belong in or he's ****-scared of the media saying anything negative about him so he's prioritised policies that the wealthy, the markets and business will accept.
sherlock
Well-known member
Hang on a minute, didn't you have a go at me recently for posting things without evidence? Surely you're not posting something he 'apparently' said without ensuring it is true are you?
BlindBoyGrunt
Well-known member
So are you going by word of mouth or did you see the speech or read a summary of it?
Boro.Fur
Well-known member
He did say it. It was streamed live on the BBC and I would imagine the reports will be available for googling shortly.
Sir Keir Starmer noted NHS waiting lists had been going down for five months. “Now is the time in my belief for greater urgency and to go further and faster for what we need to do on security and renewal. So every pound that we spend, every regulation, every decision must deliver for working people,” he said.22 mins ago
In the Torygraph apparently.
In the Torygraph apparently.
Boro.Fur
Well-known member
That's an opinion that can't be tested scientifically. It's like trying to compare footballers from different eras.
The Tories had a tiny majority before 2017. It's true Theresa May wanted a larger majority but only to give her a stronger mandate on a Brexit deal within her own party. Labour did do a lot better than expected but the Tory Party was on the verge of collapse at the time.
Again, we'll never know. I'm a bit perplexed as to how you can state with any certainty whatsoever that Starmer would have made a commitment one way or another and still lose comfortably. Again, it's your dislike of the man personally coming to the fore.
He was very pro remain and was insisting on a second referendum which wouldn't have won the election. It's not a dislike of him. It's that the only party winning that election was one committed to Brexit.
BlindBoyGrunt
Well-known member
The most up to date figures I can find are as follows:
July 2024: Approximately 7.62 million treatments were awaiting completion at the end of June 2024.
August 2024: The waiting list increased slightly to 7.75 million.
September 2024: The waiting list decreased to approximately 7.57 million.
October 2024: The waiting list further decreased to approximately 7.54 million.
November 2024: The waiting list continued to decrease to approximately 7.48 million.
December 2024: The waiting list further decreased to approximately 7.48 million.
The reduction in waiting list figures from August (when there was an increase) to December is 3.48%
If you include July the reduction comes down to !.83%
A good chunk of NHS budget is paid to private health providers to help reduce waiting lists.
Chorleygeorge
Active member
A Rastafarian Zion or a Jewish Zion ?
newyddion
Well-known member
without qualification
sherlock
Well-known member
And when you consider that much of the small decrease comes purely from comparing with months when there was strike action, it's not exactly the impressive progress that Starmer and Streeting are claiming.
SmallTown
Well-known member
The direction of travel is good though. And of course these are months where you'd expect waiting lists to go up
