Labour expected to launch ‘postmortem’ audit of NHS finances

The new Labour government is expected to launch a forensic probe into NHS England’s finances and performance that will highlight the dire condition of the health service, according to four people briefed on the plan. 

The review, if it goes ahead, would help health secretary Wes Streeting manage expectations on how quickly the service can be improved and build support for Labour’s reform plans, the people said.

“It’s a clever thing to do to say ‘we knew it was bad but didn’t realise it was this bad’,” said one health official. The review would last about 100 days and was described by another person as a “postmortem”.

Streeting has called the NHS “broken” after 14 years of Conservative management and has insisted that extra investment into the health system would be conditional on reform.

His immediate challenges include an ongoing pay dispute by junior doctors. On Tuesday, Streeting will meet the British Medical Association, the doctors’ union, to try to reach a resolution.

One of the people familiar with the discussions insisted no final decision had been made on whether to launch the review.

The Department of Health and Social Care said: “We recognise the NHS is broken and will take time to fix, but we have made it our mission to build an NHS fit for the future.”

Streeting has said the NHS is in need of reform to accelerate the use of digital technology to monitor and diagnose patients, including helping them to manage their own health.

He is also keen to ensure the service works more effectively with local authorities and charities on preventive health and to ease bottlenecks that can make it hard to discharge patients from hospital.

In recent years, a big influx of new staff into the health service has failed to drive down waiting lists or significantly boost patient outcomes, a trend Richard Meddings, chair of NHS England, has attributed in part to a lack of capital investment.

One signal as to Labour’s likely approach to reviving the health service has emerged in the form of Alan Milburn, a former New Labour health secretary who is set to join Streeting’s team.

Milburn, a principal architect of New Labour’s successful assault on long waiting lists, used the private sector to expand NHS capacity and sought to prioritise patient choice. His approach was viewed by critics as privatising the state-run health service.

Two people familiar with discussions told the Financial Times last week that Streeting could also look to align the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England more closely through shared executive meetings. 

The NHS waiting list for routine care stood at 7.6mn at the end of April. As well as attempting to clear this backlog, the service is also trying to strengthen prevention of illness and early diagnosis of disease.

Labour has vowed that within five years the vast majority of people will wait no more than 18 weeks after referral to start non-urgent hospital treatment, a standard last achieved in 2015.