Starmer unveils 'ambitious' NHS plan during visit to Essex

Delivering a speech at an ambulance station in Braintree today, he echoed Nye Bevan, the Labour minister who helped found the health service, in describing illness as “neither an indulgence” to be paid for, “nor an offence” to be penalised.

The Labour leader claimed the NHS will not survive another five years under the Tories, whom he accused of not believing in their “heart of hearts” in the service’s core promise to ensure it is available for all those who need it.

What NHS policies did Sir Keir Starmer announce in Braintree?

During the policy announcement, Sir Keir confirmed several key commitments which included:

• Reducing cardiovascular disease including heart attacks and strokes by 25 per cent within a decade;
• Ensuring 75 per cent of all cancer is diagnosed at stages one and two, making it easier to treat;
• Ambulances responding to cardiac arrest callouts within seven minutes;
• And a return to the target of 95 per cent of all A&E patients being seen within four hours.

Speech - Sir Keir Starmer addressed an audience at an ambulance station in Braintree (Image: PA)

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He also pledged a Labour government would hit all NHS cancer targets, for example, for 85 per cent of patients to start treatment within 62 days of an urgent GP referral.

He said: “We will fix the NHS. We will reform the NHS. Old values, new opportunities.

“An NHS, not just off its knees, but running confidently towards the future.”

Sir Keir promised the audience, which included Colchester Labour councillors, that a Labour government “will deliver an NHS that is there when you need it”, adding: “No backsliding, no excuses. We will meet these standards again. We will get the NHS back on its feet.”

Audience - Former Colchester Labour group leader Adam Fox, with Colchester councillors Pam Cox, Steph Nissen, and Sam McLean (Image: Newsquest)

Sir Keir also used the speech to propose a ban on advertising junk food to children, which he has said will target both TV and social media, and measures to prevent suicide.

He has proposed a shift towards more community-based mental healthcare to reduce the burden on hospitals, with a pledge to recruit 8,500 new staff and ensure treatment is available in less than a month.

The Labour leader said in his speech a “cruel lottery of who lives and who dies” exists in Britain despite the NHS being founded to offer care for all those who need it.

He told the audience: “[The Tories] voted against the NHS right at the start – more than once.

“While they have come to accept it as part of the political furniture, in their heart of hearts they don’t believe in its central promise.

“For them, it’s a cost, not a cause, and from that mindset springs the well of their neglect.

“The poverty of their ambition, the sticking plaster, crisis management impulse that never sees the opportunities, never addresses the long-term.”