UK’s Sunak Holds Emergency Talks Over NHS Crisis

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is holding an emergency meeting on Saturday with health leaders in a bid to ease the winter pressure on the National Health Service (NHS).

Downing Street said Sunak would use the ad-hoc NHS Recovery Forum to find ways to improve the performance and outcomes across the health service, focusing on four key issues including social care and delayed discharge, urgent and emergency care, elective care, and primary care.

Labour’s shadow health secretary Wes Streeting blamed the Conservative government for “mismanaging” the nationally owned and run health care service during its decade in power, saying patients “deserve more than a talking shop.”

The emergency meeting in addition to Sunak’s regular meetings on the health service comes as the NHS is dealing with record-high backlogs accumulated during the COVID-19 pandemic, winter pressure with increased flu and COVID cases, and strikes over pay disputes.

Those invited to No. 10 Downing Street on Saturday include Health Secretary Steve Barclay, Treasury minister John Glen, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Oliver Dowden, NHS England chief executive Amanda Pritchard, England’s chief medical officer Professor Sir Chris Whitty, other chief executives and clinical leaders from NHS organisations, local areas and councils from across the country, clinical experts from Royal Colleges, and independent sector organisations working with health and social care services to deliver services for patients.

In a New Year speech on Wednesday, Sunak set out five pledges for the year ahead, including cutting NHS waiting lists and making sure the national health service is “built around patients.”

Citing investments and measures already underway, including “virtual wards” to treat acute respiratory infections patients remotely, community diagnostic centres, and £500 million extra funding to speed up hospital discharge this winter, Downing Street said the meeting is the “next step in the significant action that the government has taken” to alleviate the pressure on the NHS.

“As the Prime Minister made clear this week, easing the immediate pressures whilst also focussing on the long-term improvement of the NHS is one of his key promises,” a spokesperson said in a statement.

“That’s why we’re bringing together the best minds from the health and care sectors to help share knowledge and practical solutions so that we can tackle the most crucial challenges such as delayed discharge and emergency care.”

The spokesperson said ministers want to “correct the unwarranted variation in NHS performance between local areas.”

An ambulance outside an Accident and Emergency Department on Jan. 6, 2022. (Dominic Lipinski/PA Media)

Streeting said the government’s £500 million new funding is “yet to reach the front line and is now too late to make a difference this winter” and blamed the government for the situation the NHS is in.

Senior doctors say the NHS is on a knife edge, with many A&E units struggling to keep up with demand and trusts and ambulance services declaring critical incidents.

A wave of strikes and high levels of flu and coronavirus are putting huge pressure on the health service.

Discharge rates fell to a new low in England last week, with only a third of patients ready to be released from hospital actually leaving.

NHS Confederation chief executive Matthew Taylor also said the government’s investment came “too late to have maximum impact this winter.”

He also said there are “no silver bullets” to solve the crisis after “decades of underinvestment.”

“This crisis has been a decade or more in the making and we are now paying the high price for years of inaction and managed decline,” he said.

Taylor said patients are “experiencing delays that we haven’t seen for years,” while “high levels of flu, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and rising COVID levels are exacerbating the problem.”

He blamed the situation on “decades of underinvestment in staffing, capital, and the lack of a long-term solution to the capacity crunch facing social care.”

On Monday, the health secretary will meet union leaders to discuss NHS pay for the next financial year in talks that are unlikely to avert planned strikes.

Royal College of Nursing general secretary Pat Cullen told the prime minister to “grasp the nettle and negotiate with nurses” to prevent industrial action.

“We’ll of course go to the meeting and make the case for nursing in all forums, but it’s sadly not what’s going to prevent strike action that’s planned for 10 days’ time,” she told BBC Radio 4’s “Today” programme.

“I have put out an olive branch to get us to the table, I’m asking the prime minister now to meet the RCN halfway. The ball is firmly in the prime minister’s court,” she said.

A Department of Health and Social Care source said the Health Secretary plans to host an “honest and constructive conversation about what is affordable for NHS pay in the coming year.”

PA Media contributed to this report.