Two in three voters have described NHS services as “bad”, according to a new poll revealing that Britons appear to be losing faith in the health service.
Some 67 per cent of people say NHS services were bad and only 22 per cent say they are good, according to the YouGov survey – which also found 78 per cent think the health service if currently operating “badly”.
Amid record waiting lists for care and delays to ambulance services, the poll for The Times also found that 85 per cent of voters believe Rishi Sunak’s government was handling the NHS “badly”.
The wave of industrial action which has hit the NHS in recent months will continue this week, and could soon escalate unless there is a breakthrough to bitter disputes over pay and conditions.
Members of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) will walk out on Wednesday and Thursday. The union has warned that double the number of nurses – all eligible members in England – will be asked to strike in February if progress is not made in talks.
GMB leaders will meet on Monday to decide whether to call more strikes among their ambulance members because of the lack of progress in talks. Any decision is likely to be announced later in the week.
Unison’s Sara Gorton has revealed that health secretary Steve Barclay’s tone has been “very different” in negotiations this week, and he privately told unions he wanted to secure a better pay offer from No 10. But no talks are schedule for this week.
Meanwhile Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer is facing criticism from health leaders, campaigners and Labour activists over his vow to end “bureaucratic nonsense” in the NHS.
Sir Keir said inefficiencies in the NHS created a “mind-boggling waste of time” and said he wanted to allow patients to be able to bypass GPs and self-refer themselves to specialists.
The British Medical Association (BMA) said Labour didn’t “understand” the vital role of GPs, while leading NHS campaigner Dr Rachel Clarke called Sir Keir’s proposal “monumentally stupid”.
One Labour MP on the left told The Independent many in the party wanted a commitment to a “very significant injection of cash” for the NHS from Sir Keir ahead of the next election.
Labour MP Rachel Maskell, a member of the Socialist Campaign Group, also criticised shadow health secretary Wes Streeting for suggesting that the NHS is too often run for the benefit of doctors rather than patients.
“I don’t think it’s helpful because I truly respect NHS clinicians,” she told LBC. “Of course we’ve got to ask questions, but clinicians have got to do their job and don’t need the interference from Westminster.”
It comes as the president of the Royal College of GPs said the NHS needs a “rethink” in how it deals with the public getting older with chronic disease.
Professor Dame Clare Gerada told Times Radio on Monday: “Clearly what we need now is a rethink, not a top-down reorganisation, but a rethink about where the staff are, where staff are trained, where the resources are, how we develop what I would call cottage hospitals – we used to have them and they all got closed down.”
Matthew Taylor, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said the system was “unaffordable as it is currently configured”, adding: “We need to minimise the time people spend in hospital.”
Sir John Bell, Oxford University’s regius professor of medicine, also called for reform, comparing the NHS crisis to World War I. “They seem intent on pursuing the Battle of the Somme strategy: hire … doctors and nurses and send them into the fray. It creates no measurable forward progress and costs a fortune,” he said.
