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The health secretary stands accused by a local campaigner of carrying out massive NHS budget cuts “piecemeal” across the country, to avoid an embarrassing national announcement. Mr Streeting’s own local NHS trust has announced it expects to start “restricting” services in the coming financial year due to “radical” Labour budget cuts. Ex-Chadwell Labour councillor Andy Walker, who once campaigned alongside Mr Streeting against NHS cuts , said: “Unfortunately, it’s not surprising.
The dominant coalition in this government is big business. “With a few clicks of a mouse, you can see Wes Streeting has taken significant amounts of money from people with links to private healthcare. My concern is that we are looking at privatisation by stealth.
” Mr Streeting’s office did not respond. Board members at Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust (BHRUT) – which runs Queen’s Hospital in Romford and King George Hospital in Ilford – have been warned they face “very hard decisions”. The trust admitted to Newsquest that it must save £61m in the next financial year.
Chief executive Matthew Trainer has told the board it will likely have to “restrict access to certain services”. “When King George’s A&E was under threat, local Conservative politicians like Keith Prince and Iain Duncan Smith stuck up for their local hospital and made a stand against their own government,” said Mr Walker. “It’s very disappointing that so far, not a single Labour politician has said a single thing against these planned cuts.
I am throwing down the gauntlet. But my guess is they won’t say a word. “I will be pushing for a consultation.
Usually, if services are going to be taken away, there would be a consultation. I’ll be pushing for them to say exactly what services are going to go. It appears to be piecemeal rather than a national withdrawal of certain procedures.
” The consequence of a postcode lottery in which some areas withdraw services is more people having to go private, said Mr Walker – which he believes is Labour’s ultimate goal. Newsquest’s Scottish newspaper The National has long reported on Mr Streeting’s custom of accepting donations from individuals and organisations linked to private healthcare. Between 2017 and 2019, he accepted £40,000 from businessman Peter Hearn, a recruitment executive whose firms help recruit for the private healthcare industry.
Since then, Mr Streeting has accepted just shy of £200,000 from two of Mr Hearn’s companies, MPM Connect Ltd and OPD Group Ltd. Between 2022 and 2023, he also accepted £95,000 from John Armitage, a hedge fund manager with hundreds of millions of pounds invested in the world’s largest private health insurer. He declared all these donations, meaning he has done nothing wrong.
Labour has previously described links between the donations and private healthcare as “tenuous at best”. The Department for Health and Social Care this week told Newsquest: “The NHS is and will remain free at the point of use under this government – the health secretary has been absolutely clear on this commitment.” Wes Streeting and Andy Walker campaigning together against east London NHS cuts in 2014 Mr Walker has run the Save King George Hospital blog since 2011 and is now a member of the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition.
He accused the Labour government of cowardice, saying while it had announced cuts to administrative body NHS England, it had not announced cuts to local trusts. Instead, he said, news of huge cuts was trickling out one region at a time. Newsquest has recently reported on more than 1,000 planned job cuts across Cambridgeshire , Southampton and the Isle of Wight .
But east London’s BHRUT is the first to warn it faces having to restrict treatments. Mr Trainer told the board in January that it faced “really hard decisions”, including “deliberate decisions to constrain access to services”. “It’s taking place bit by bit across the country, rather than Wes Streeting announcing it nationally and defending these cuts in Parliament,” said Mr Walker.
“He should be taking questions about this at the dispatch box.” Mr Streeting’s office was approached for comment but did not respond..
