#darzi

Angela Raynor, the Deputy Prime Minister has abandoned the ‘levelling up’ title from her role as Secretary of State for Housing and Communities, promising, "no more gimmicks no more slogans”.

Unfortunately, Wez Streeting didn’t receive the same the memo.

On Sky’s ‘Political Hub' programme he compared walking into his Department of Health and Social Care as being like entering a house that is in “a complete state."  It is clear to me, said Streeting, that the NHS is “broken" and that ‘sunlight is the best disinfectant”. What we need, he said, is a review of the NHS and for someone to:

“Take up the carpets, look at the floorboards and tell us how bad things really are”.

So much for no more slogans  and gimmicky  sound bites! As for a review, if he knows the NHS is broken then he doesn’t need a review to tell him that. We can rightfully blame the Tories for running down the NHS over the last 14 years but what has Labour been doing during that time to formulate a plan to repair that damage?

Streeting has chosen Lord Darzi to lead his review into the NHS. This should come as no surprise. Lord Darzi, on paper at least, is the ideal man for the job as he has previous government experience and conducted an earlier review of the NHS under Gordan Brown.

Despite these seemingly ideal qualifications, the cynical amongst us might suggest another, more compelling, reason Darzi has been chosen.

“Lord Darzi: Labour wrong to rule out private NHS care” (BBC News: 29/01/15)

For Darzi, it is irrelevant who delivers NHS services ,  private or public, he doesn’t care. This attitude suites Streeting down to the ground as his ambition is to expand the privatisation of healthcare provision within the NHS.

“NHS should ‘seek to use’ private healthcare capacity, Wes Streeting says.”  (FT: 24/03/24)

Wes Streeting, Keir Starmer and Yvette Cooper have all accepted funding from private healthcare donors -  £193,725, £157,500, and £295.205 respectively. (Labour Heartlands: 17/06/23)

How much this has  played a part in Labours plans for the NHS remains to be seen, but these sums are not insubstantial and presumably these private healthcare companies expect a return for their money.

Angela Raynor may have dropped "levelling up” from her title but Wes Streeting is shamelessly using it as an argument to privatise the NHS.

According to Streeting:

“It is the principled thing to do because we’ve got a two tier system that’s opened up where those who can afford it are going private and those that cant are being priced out and left behind. My Labour principles say that working class people deserve the same quality, the same access to services as people from wealthier backgrounds.”

This is the classic “levelling up” argument being used to defend healthcare for profit rather than for social good.  We had the same argument from Starmer regarding private education.

“Sir Keir Starmer hopes to bring state schools up to private standards in first term." (SKY NEWS: 06/07/23) 

Initially Starmer was going to strip private schools of their undeserved charitable status. This would have given the exchequer an estimated £1.7 billion extra funding to spend on state education, but that plan as since been ditched. The 7% of pupils who are privately educated are to be allowed to continue their privileged education together with the socio-economic benefits that brings.

The same privileges are to prevail regarding health. Those with deep pockets can afford to pay for private healthcare and jump NHS waiting lists. Streeting's plan to privatise even more of the NHS by paying for the use of their “spare capacity" hardly helps anyone. Once that "spare capacity" is full, we are back to ever expanding  waiting lists that the wealthy can still circumvent because they have the money to do so.

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Uthorim fades from a world that loved him leaving behind a place of warmth and joy.

Darzi dies in the wastes defending his reformed tribe.

Nines is still a little up in the air but I like to think she gives her last protecting something, a final act of the good thays been buried and locked away.

Zara Noor Abbas in Chhalawa (2019)