Streeting defends Labour's plans to use private sector firms to cut NHS backlog

Wes Streeting has defended Labour's plans to use the private sector to help cut the NHS backlog, arguing that a failure to do so would result in a "betrayal" of working-class people who cannot afford to pay for care.

- Pippa Crerar

The shadow health secretary said his approach was "pragmatic but principled" as he doubled down on his remarks about "middle-class lefties" who he said risked putting ideological purity ahead of care.

However, in an interview with the Guardian he insisted the NHS would be privatised "over my dead body", saying his longer term ambition was for no one to be forced to pay.

Streeting has aroused suspicion among some Labour MPs, unions and NHS campaigners over his embrace of private healthcare to cut the backlog, which stands at 7.6m treatments in England alone. But he said he was "fed up" with the binary view that ignored the fact that after 14 years of Tory rule a two-tier system meant some people could afford to go private, while others were left behind.

"From a leftwing perspective, it's not right that people who are poorer are priced out of faster healthcare," he said. "It goes against everything I believe in as a Labour politician. As somebody who might lead a middleclass life now, but with working-class roots, it's a betrayal of the people I grew up with." He said that a Labour government would use the private sector for "as long as it takes" to get people seen faster, blaming the Tories' failure to invest sufficiently in staff, technology and capacity.