Our NHS is in a critical condition. Our plan will save it.

Our NHS is in a critical condition. I knew this from the countless conversations I had on the doorstep with people who were stuck on NHS waiting lists for months in pain waiting for operations or families who had sat in A & E in Tameside or Stepping Hill for hours on end waiting for treatment.

The sheer scale of the problem was laid bare last week in a report by Lord Darzi, a respected surgeon and independent peer. Lord Darzi’s findings are utterly shocking:

14,000 people dying every year because of the record waiting lists.

No progress for nearly a decade on early cancer diagnosis.

Technology 15 years behind the private sector.

250,000 babies waiting more than four hours in A&E.

One million people waiting for mental health support, with more than 300,000 referrals taking more than a year.

The symptoms of failure and decline are all too evident. The NHS used to be the envy of the world. It is no longer after 14 years of total neglect and mismanagement by the Conservatives.

The Labour Party has always been the Party of the NHS. In 1948, it was a Labour government that founded our National Health Service. And the last Labour government achieved the shortest waiting lists and highest patient satisfaction in history. To save the NHS this time is many magnitudes greater than anything we have faced before.

The Prime Minister has been clear on the treatment. The NHS must ‘reform or die.’ To do this we must reduce the bottle neck in A & Es and bring care back into our local communities. This will allow for earlier and quicker diagnosis, which will be more convenient and cheaper for us all.

Many of my family and friends work in the NHS. No modern business would survive using the technology available to them and neither will the NHS. Whilst the new world grapples with the potential of AI, we still have hospitals faxing each important documents. We must close this technology gap, including doubling the number of CT and MRI scanners and transforming the NHS app to make healthcare more accessible and responsive in the modern age.

Finally, we must ensure the NHS is once again a National Health Service, not just a National Sickness Service. This means focusing on prevention rather than cure. For example, smoking still claims 80,000 lives each year, places huge pressures on our NHS and costs us the taxpayer £17 billion a year. We will tackle this head on with a progressive ban on smoking so that children born after 1 January 2009 will never be able to legally buy cigarettes and we will stop vapes and other nicotine products being advertised and branded to appeal to children.

We have saved the NHS before. Our plan will save it again.