Sir Keir Starmer to pledge 'biggest reimagining of our NHS since its birth' as damning report says it's in a 'critical condition'

Lord Ara Darzi’s influential report identified serious and widespread problems for people accessing services, amidst surging waiting lists and a deterioration in the nation’s underlying health.

The practising NHS surgeon said that too much of the health service’s budget was being spent in hospitals and not enough in the community, which was leading to falling productivity.

One particularly shocking finding was that the UK has appreciably higher cancer mortality rates than other countries, with the peer saying that no progress whatsoever was made in diagnosing cancer at stage one and two between 2013 and 2021.

The report also said that “the health of the nation has deteriorated over the past 15 years”, with a substantial increase in the number of people living with multiple long-term conditions.

Lord Darzi said: “Although I have worked in the NHS for more than 30 years, I have been shocked by what I have found during this investigation - not just in the health service but in the state of the nation’s health.”

He continued: “We need to rebalance the system towards care in the community rather than adding more and more staff to hospitals. 

“And we need a more honest conversation about performance - the NHS is now an open book.

“In the last 15 years, the NHS was hit by three shocks - austerity and starvation of investment, confusion caused by top-down reorganisation, and then the pandemic which came with resilience at an all-time low. 

“Two out of three of those shocks were choices made in Westminster. 

“It took more than a decade for the NHS to fall into disrepair so it’s going to take time to fix it. 

“But we in the NHS have turned things around before, and I’m confident we will do it again.”

Responding to the report, the Prime Minister will give a speech this morning saying the damage done to the NHS is “unforgivable”.

“People have every right to be angry,” he will say. 

“It’s not just because the NHS is so personal to all of us - it’s because some of these failings are life and death.”

Sir Keir will blame the state of the NHS on a “scorched earth” approach to health reform during the austerity period, with “crumbling buildings, decrepit portacabins, mental health patients accommodated in Victorian-era cells infested with vermin”.

He will say: “The 2010s were a lost decade for our NHS…which left the NHS unable to be there for patients today, and totally unprepared for the challenges and opportunities of tomorrow.”

The Prime Minister will pledge a 10-year plan, which he says will be “something so different from anything that has come before”.

“Instead of the top-down approach of the past, this plan is going to have the fingerprints of NHS staff and patients all over it,” Sir Keir will say.

“And as we build it together, I want to frame this plan around three big shifts - first, moving from an analogue to a digital NHS. A tomorrow service not just a today service.”

“Second, we’ve got to shift more care from hospitals to communities... And third, we’ve got to be much bolder in moving from sickness to prevention.”

Amanda Pritchard, the NHS England chief executive, said: “We are fully committed to working with government to create a 10-year plan for healthcare to ensure the NHS recovers from Covid, strengthens its foundations and continues to reform so it is fit for future generations.”

However, campaigners have said a failure to include reform of social care in the remit of the report “beggars belief”.

Mike Padgham, chair of North Yorkshire’s Independent Care Group, said: “That is a serious omission and makes something of a nonsense of the whole process.

"It is like getting a surveyor’s report on the crumbling foundations of a house but ignoring the holes in the roof – the building is going to collapse anyway. “For politicians to keep talking about reform of the NHS without including reform of social care at the same time, beggars belief.”