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Voters in May’s local and devolved elections risk putting the NHS in jeopardy if they vote for populist parties, Wes Streeting has said, as he sought to make the health service a key battleground.
“The founding principles of the NHS are at greater threat than at any time since the NHS was founded in 1948,” the health secretary said.
He warned that there was “a particular jeopardy” for the NHS in Wales, where Labour faces electoral wipeout at the hands of Reform UK and Plaid Cymru, with the latter pitching itself to voters as the best “stop Reform” option.
Streeting called Labour’s progressive rivals “rookies” and said he “refuse[d] to believe that many people in Wales would vote for Reform if they knew where Nigel Farage stood on the NHS”.
Streeting argued that the NHS in Scotland was weaker after almost two decades of SNP governance, while in England Labour-run councils would work more efficiently with Labour in government.
“The choice that the voters need to make is who do they want to be in government in Scotland after 20 years of SNP failure?” he said. “In Wales, do they really want to take the risk of the rookies, Plaid Cymru, or the disaster zone that is Reform, when they could have a Welsh Labour government working in partnership with a UK Labour government to deliver for Wales?
“And in councils across England, where Labour councils have managed to deliver against a Tory government, we need to keep those councils Labour so they can deliver in partnership with a Labour government.”
The intervention comes as new polling by More in Common for the Sunday Times suggested that 16 out of 22 cabinet ministers – including Rachel Reeves, Yvette Cooper, Ed Miliband and John Healey – would lose their seats if a general election were held today, with 12 seats going to Reform, three to the Greens and one to an independent.
In an interview with the Guardian before a speech to the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) on Monday, Streeting said the NHS was a “key battleground” in May’s elections and accused Farage of wanting to “dismantle” the NHS and of failing to set out his plans on healthcare.
“The idea that the country that gave birth to Bevan and the NHS would elect into government in Wales a party that would dismantle it just sends shivers down my spine,” Streeting said.
Before the 2024 general election, Reform pledged to offer tax relief of 20% on all private healthcare policies if it won power. During Reform’s Welsh conference in 2024, Farage called for a “fundamental rethink” to fix the Welsh NHS, which has significantly longer waiting lists than Scotland and England. Earlier this year, he told LBC he was “open to anything” and would consider a “French-style” NHS insurance system.
A Reform spokesperson said: “We will always keep the NHS free at the point of use for British citizens.”
Streeting said Farage and fellow Reform MPs such as Richard Tice did “not believe in the NHS” but were “being uncharacteristically shy” in order not to lose votes. “They hope voters will go into these elections thinking Reform is a safe protest vote. They are not. They are a risk to the NHS,” he said.
Streeting said a recent Guardian article that said the NHS was on course to miss key targets to shorten waiting times for help at A&E, cancer care and planned hospital treatment was based on out-of-date data.
He said the government had a “fighting chance” of meeting waiting times reduction target for the end of March despite strikes by resident doctors, adding: “We’re seeing significant and sustained reductions in the NHS waiting lists.”
Streeting, reflecting on the breadth of the challenge facing Labour before the May elections, also took aim at the Green party, which he called “uncredible”.
He said: “We have done really good progressive Labour things. My frustration is that we’ve had our heads down getting on with doing those things. We need to do a lot better at looking up and telling the country what we’re doing.”
While Streeting is widely believed to harbour leadership ambitions, he insisted that if Labour fared poorly in May, he would urge fellow MPs not to attempt to oust Keir Starmer. “The prime minister is here to stay,” he said. “Keir Starmer won a big majority at the last election and a mandate to change the country. We’ve got to get on with that job, not turning in on ourselves.”
