Andrew Marr: Labour are making big promises on the NHS - but failure to deliver will see trust decline ever further

22 May 2023, 18:27 | Updated: 22 May 2023, 19:16

Andrew Marr has said Labour must deliver on its promises to get the NHS "back on its feet", but questions how the vast reforms the party is planning will be funded.

Speaking on Tonight with Andrew Marr, the presenter reflected on his own experience of being treated for a stroke in an NHS hospital, and stressed that for himself and many other Britons, the health of the health service is not "just another political story".

His comments come after Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer vowed that in the government, the party would reverse the rise in suicide deaths in England and Wales within five years, as well as cutting deaths from heart disease and cancer, and reducing NHS waiting lists.

But Labour has come under pressure to explain how these targets will be met without tax rises.

"'Illness is neither an indulgence for which people have to pay; nor an offence for which they should be penalised,'" Andrew said, "The words of Nye Bevan, founder of the National Health Service, quoted earlier today by Keir Starmer, the Labour leader.

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"The NHS is a subject about which almost all of us have stories, and most of us feel in one way or another emotional. I'm only speaking to you today in front of this microphone because of the NHS.

"10 years ago I had a very major stroke, was rushed by ambulance to Charing Cross hospital, and endured several days when it was, frankly, touch or go.

Marr: If Labour 'failed' to deliver NHS promises, they would see a 'catastrophic' decline in trust

"My family were ushered into a room by a doctor and warned that I wasn't going to make it. A day later they were told I might make it but I’d be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life and possibly unable to speak or understand them, and here I am. All NHS.

"In hospital, I had to learn how to walk again, and how to speak again. And I did. All NHS. And I know that many of you listening tonight have your own NHS stories which are, for you, just as dramatic.

"This very day my colleague Iain Dale has been undergoing a major operation in another NHS hospital, St Thomas’s, after falling down an escalator and smashing his hip. All good, he says. Love and best wishes to Iain.

"My point, however, is that NHS funding and reform is not just another political story. Make promises about our NHS and you'd better deliver them. In his speech today Sir Keir made some dramatic promises.

"'Ambulances – seven minutes for cardiac arrest; A&E – back to the four hour target; GPs – the highest satisfaction levels on record; waiting lists – down; planned treatment within 18 weeks.No backsliding, no excuses – we will meet these standards again. We will get the NHS back on its feet.'

"He goes on to promise to get survival rates for heart disease and stroke down by a quarter and ensure that 75 percent of all cancer is diagnosed at stage one or two; and he promises that suicide, the biggest killer of young lives in this country, will be reduced.

"On all of that, I say, absolutely wonderful, great. And if that requires further tough reform inside the NHS, that’s a price which must be paid.

"But these are huge, ambitious promises, meant to be delivered in the first term of a new government - that's really quick.

"Starmer is clear that Labour is not going to bring a great chunk of extra money into the room to help. More nurses and doctors will be paid for by taxing non-dom residents.

"There will be no new charges, no new specific health tax, and I can't be the only person who wonders whether it's actually possible to turn around the NHS without a new injection of money.

"Nigel Edwards of the Nuffield Trust Think Tank says that the deep problems in the NHS are unlikely to be fixed within five years: 'and delivering them will require time, staff and more long-term funding than Labour have so far pledged'.

"So I have no questions about the what or the why, but there are certainly questions about the how.

"And remember, finally, we’re living at a time of huge, weary cynicism about politics and whether the state can actually deliver anything well - so if Labour came into power and then failed on its NHS promises we’d see a further and perhaps catastrophic decline in trust."