Tough medicine is exactly what the ailing NHS needs

Wes Streeting gets full marks for boldness: he delivered an unpalatable message to 800 health leaders at their annual conference in Liverpool.

- ANDREW GRICE

He didn’t need to announce his NHS reforms in the lion’s den, and some ministers would have shied away from that. In the event, his message received polite applause, and nothing worse.

The health secretary told NHS Providers that the 215 health trusts in England will be ranked in league tables, based on performance indicators (likely to include waiting times, leadership and finance); senior managers who persistently fail will be sacked, barred from moving to other hospitals or receive no pay rises. “Turnaround teams” will be sent into struggling health trusts.

Answering questions after his speech, Streeting claimed poor senior leaders were the NHS’s “guilty secret”, adding that his move is “about weeding out the rotten apples so the excellent leaders are not tarred with the same brush”. He insisted he was not “manager-bashing”.

However, there are predictable protests from health organisations. I have bad news for them: yesterday’s announcement is only the first stage of Streeting’s reforms. He will set out further changes in a series of speeches. It seems the Starmer government really means it when it says the NHS’s Budget boost – £22.6bn over two years – will be matched by reform.