Just look at Labour’s record in Wales if you think Keir Starmer can be trusted to cut NHS waiting lists, Health Secretary Steve Barclay says

• The Health Secretary said waiting lists will soar under a Labour government
• Mr Barclay said: ‘You’ll wait longer for treatment from the NHS with Labour’

Sir Keir Starmer cannot be trusted with the NHS and waiting lists will soar under a Labour government, the Health Secretary has said.

In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Steve Barclay said ideology would prevent Labour from making use of the private sector to boost capacity in the health service.

Mr Barclay said Welsh Labour has failed to cut NHS waiting lists. Sir Keir has suggested the Labour government in Wales offers a ‘blueprint’ for what Labour can do across the UK.

‘People can’t trust Keir Starmer with the NHS,’ he said. ‘You’ll wait longer for treatment from the NHS with Labour.’

Pointing to splits in the shadow frontbench over whether to use the private sector to clear the backlog, he said: ‘We get ideology on the Labour benches being put before the needs of patients.’

Health Secretary Steve Barclay (right) tells The Mail On Sunday’s Anna Mikhailova (left) that Sir Keir Starmer cannot be trusted with the NHS and waiting lists will soar under a Labour government

We met in his Cambridgeshire constituency office on Friday — the day junior doctors began a four-day walkout, while a record 7.6 million people wait for care.

He said it is ‘frustrating’ to see the strikes, which he knows have a ‘direct impact on patients’ and will only worsen the waiting-list crisis. But he is also confident that utilising independent healthcare to free up capacity — by making it easier for patients to choose where they get their treatment — will help, as will increasing diagnostic centres and the use of technology.

Mr Barclay told The Mail on Sunday that he has been accused of privatising the NHS, but said he is ‘willing to take that criticism’ if it means cutting waiting lists — while Labour politicians such as Wales’s First Minister, Mark Drakeford, are not.

‘Given the challenge we all face from the pandemic, not just in the NHS in England but across the UK, it’s important we maximise all available capacity,’ he said.

In Wales, more than 73,000 people are waiting 77 weeks or more for treatment. In England, such lengthy waiting times have been ‘virtually eliminated’, officials said.

Mr Barclay said if the Welsh approach is replicated in England, then more than a million people will be waiting for NHS treatment for 18 months or longer under a Labour government.

Today the Health Secretary has written to the devolved administrations urging that they use private healthcare to clear the backlog, and calling for them to ‘collaborate’ with Westminster. In Scotland, at least 21,600 people are waiting more than 78 weeks for an outpatient, day case or inpatient appointment.

In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Steve Barclay (pictured) said ideology would prevent Labour from making use of the private sector to boost capacity in the health service

He has also suggested that Welsh and Scottish patients stuck on lengthy waiting lists could receive treatment in England via the NHS or the private sector.

STEVE BARCLAY: Our offers to doctors are fair and final. This strike only serves to harm patients… READ MORE 

‘We’re seeing patients in Wales wanting to come over for treatment due to the state of the waits in Wales,’ Mr Barclay said.

‘The public can see what Sir Keir Starmer would do with the NHS by looking at what is happening now in Wales, where people are waiting much longer, they have less choice, and there is far less use of the capacity that’s available in the independent sector. Under Labour there would be longer waits.’

On private healthcare, he said: ‘It is important that we make use of the independent sector much more across the UK as a whole, but there is a reluctance to use it as much as we’re doing in England.’

Thirteen community diagnostic centres will be opened across England to carry out more than 742,000 extra scans, checks and tests per year. Eight of these will be operated by the private sector — although all services will remain free to patients.

Mr Barclay said: ‘We’re quite upfront — we’re going to use the independent sector. And that leaves people saying to me, ‘Does that mean you’re privatising the NHS?’ Obviously the answer is no — it’s free at the point of need.’

Mr Barclay has a record of taking tough roles in government. He was Brexit Secretary under Theresa May, at a time when no one wanted the job. Last year, he was brought in as chief of staff to Boris Johnson while the Prime Minister was under fire from his party.

Health Secretary Steve Barclay (pictured centre) said Welsh Labour has failed to cut NHS waiting lists

Which is harder, the role of Health Secretary or Brexit Secretary? He said the challenge he faces in his current brief is more ‘immediate’.

‘Health so directly interacts with all our families and concerns life-threatening conditions. Obviously that is more immediate than questions of policy, which were often impacting on decisions that will be made some years down the line.’ Mr Barclay, who has two children aged 12 and ten, has said he and his family use the NHS. How has he found it recently? ‘Everyone, particularly those with young children, tends to interact with the NHS,’ he said. ‘Part of the reason the NHS is held in such high regard is because of the staff.

‘Certainly in my dealings with the NHS that is what always comes through — the compassion of the staff that I have dealt with.’

He has not taken a summer holiday abroad this year, and it’s no wonder with his current workload. He will instead be spending a week away in Norfolk. With senior doctor strikes scheduled for August 24 and 25 and warnings that the NHS is at a ‘tipping point’, his in-tray is unlikely to get any smaller.

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