In a damning resignation letter to the Prime Minister, Wes Streeting stated: “The place we’d like imaginative and prescient, now we have a vacuum. The place we’d like route, now we have drift. This was underscored by your speech on Monday. Leaders take duty, however too typically that has meant different folks falling on their swords. You additionally must hearken to your colleagues, together with backbenchers, and the heavy-handed method to dissenting voices diminishes our politics.”
That is the prolonged letter to the Prime Minister in full: “Expensive Prime Minister. The outcomes are in and I’m happy to report that I’ve delivered towards the formidable targets you set for me after I turned your Secretary of State for Well being and Social Care. Immediately’s figures affirm that we surpassed our ready occasions goal regardless of strikes, and that ready lists fell by 110,000 in March – the largest month-to-month drop outdoors of Covid since 2008 – which means that we’re on observe to attain the quickest enchancment in NHS ready occasions in historical past.
The one query that issues in authorities is whether or not we go away our successors a greater scenario than we inherited. Ambulance response occasions for coronary heart assaults and strokes at the moment are the quickest in 5 years. A&E ready occasions are bettering, with four-hour ready figures additionally the perfect in 5 years. We’ve recruited 2,000 extra GPs and satisfaction has risen from 60 per cent to 74.5 per cent since we got here to workplace. We hit our goal of recruiting 8,500 psychological well being employees three years early. We’ve achieved this on the similar as balancing the books for the primary time in 9 years and smashing the two per cent NHS productiveness goal by attaining 2.8 per cent, which suggests the funding we’re placing in goes additional and that the general public can have larger confidence that their cash is being well-spent.
None of this may have been achieved with out the sensible management staff of ministers, officers, and particular advisers now we have established within the Division of Well being and Social Care and the NHS – fantastically led by Samantha Jones and Sir Jim Mackey, who has been a knight in shining armour and a superb chief of 1.5 million employees upon whom all this success relies upon.
The Nationwide Well being Service is the embodiment of all that’s finest about Britain and our values. Due to our Labour authorities, it’s on the highway to restoration: tons carried out, however a lot extra to do.
These are all good causes for me to stay in submit, however as you recognize from our dialog earlier this week, having misplaced confidence in your management, I’ve concluded that it might be dishonourable and unprincipled to take action.
Final week’s election outcomes have been unprecedented – each by way of the dimensions of the defeat and the implications of that failure. For the primary time in our nation’s historical past, nationalists are in energy in each nook of the UK – together with a harmful English nationalism represented by Nigel Farage and Reform UK. This represents each an existential risk to the long run integrity of the UK, however Reform UK additionally signify a risk to the values and beliefs which have made this nation nice. Progressives throughout our nation perceive this risk and our duty to confront it, however they’re more and more dropping religion that the Labour Get together is able to rising to our historic duty of defeating racism and providing hope that Britain’s finest days lie forward by social democracy.
There is no such thing as a doubt that the unpopularity of this Authorities was a serious and customary consider our defeats throughout England, Scotland and Wales. Good Labour folks misplaced by no fault of their very own. There are numerous causes we might level to: from particular person errors on coverage like the choice to chop the winter gas allowance to the ‘island of strangers’ speech, all of which have left the nation not realizing who we’re or what we actually stand for.
You may have many nice strengths that I like. You led our celebration to a victory few thought potential in 2024 and I used to be proud to battle alongside you within the trenches of that marketing campaign. You may have proven braveness and statesmanship on the world stage – not least in holding Britain out of the battle in Iran.
However the place we’d like imaginative and prescient, now we have a vacuum. The place we’d like route, now we have drift. This was underscored by your speech on Monday. Leaders take duty, however too typically that has meant different folks falling on their swords. You additionally must hearken to your colleagues, together with backbenchers, and the heavy-handed method to dissenting voices diminishes our politics.
As a member of your authorities, I do know higher than most that governing is difficult. It must be, as a result of it issues. There are monumental challenges going through this nation. For the primary time in our historical past the following era faces a worse inheritance than the final. Now we have wars raging in Europe and the Center East which might be making our challenges more durable, not simpler. We’re within the foothills of a technological industrial revolution that has large implications for each facet of our lives – not least the way forward for work. It’s not clear whether or not democracy or tyranny will outline the twenty first century. After the monetary disaster, austerity, the catastrophe of Brexit, Liz Truss, the covid pandemic, the battle in Ukraine and now the battle in Iran, the nation must imagine once more that issues will be higher than this and that politics is a part of the reply, not the supply of the issue. These are massive challenges that require a daring imaginative and prescient and larger options than we’re providing.
It’s now clear that you’ll not lead the Labour Get together into the following normal election and that Labour MPs and Labour Unions need the controversy about what comes subsequent to be a battle of concepts, not of personalities or petty factionalism. It must be broad, and it wants the very best area of candidates. I help that method and I hope that you’ll facilitate this.
Serving as your Secretary of State for Well being and Social Care has been the best pleasure of my life and, no matter our variations this week, I stay really grateful to you for the chance to serve and I’m deeply saddened to be leaving authorities on this method.
Yours sincerely,
The Rt Hon Wes Streeting MP
