Labour ads use NHS to attack Farage’s views before major Reform rally

Billboards in Birmingham cite party leader’s remarks about a new funding model as local elections campaigning begins

Labour has begun an all-out assault on Nigel Farage over his views on the NHS in the run-up to key elections in May, as the Reform UK leader prepared to host what is billed as his party’s biggest ever rally in Birmingham.

In a coordinated campaign before Farage spoke at a 10,000-person event in the city on Friday evening, Labour paid for nearly a dozen billboard posters around the city with messages about his talk about replacing the NHS with an insurance-based healthcare system.

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Post-Brexit reliance on NHS staff from ‘red list’ countries is unethical, Streeting says

Exclusive: NHS England has dramatically increased recruitment of workers from states with critical medical staff shortages

Brexit has left the NHS increasingly dependent on doctors and nurses from poor “red list” countries, from which the World Health Organization says it is wrong to recruit.

The health service in England has hired tens of thousands of health staff from countries such as Nigeria, Ghana and Zimbabwe since the UK left the EU single market at the end of 2020.

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Starmer unlikely to fulfil pledge on hospital waiting times, says IFS

Thinktank predicts PM will not realise ambition for 92% of patients in England to wait less than 18 weeks for planned care by 2029

Keir Starmer is unlikely to fulfil his pledge to restore the maximum 18-week wait for planned hospital care before the next election, a leading thinktank has said.

The prime minister has made bringing back the 18-week access standard in England, by ensuring that 92% of patients are seen within that time, one of the six “milestones” he has promised to achieve by 2029.

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Peer who led government NHS review failed to declare shares in health firms

Lord Darzi’s undeclared interests in four companies included $500,000 of shares in US-based healthcare venture

The independent peer Lord Darzi, a senior adviser to the government on the NHS, failed to officially declare shareholdings in healthcare companies worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Ara Darzi is an eminent surgeon and professor at Imperial College London whose report on the NHS for the government in September informed the decision announced last week by the health secretary, Wes Streeting, to abolish NHS England. Darzi also has an extensive portfolio of private interests in commercial medical companies.

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Watchdog urges regular BMI checkups for millions across England and Wales

The proposal, put forward by Nice, would see 13 million patients checked regularly

Millions of people in England and Wales with a long-term health condition should have their body mass index (BMI) checked regularly to prevent diabetes and heart disease, an NHS watchdog is recommending.

Anyone found to be overweight should talk to sensitive, non-judgmental doctors and nurses about how they can lead a healthier life and stop their excess pounds causing them problems.

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Lucy Letby calls for public inquiry into baby deaths to be halted

Ex-nurse says inquiry should be suspended until review of convictions has finished

Lucy Letby has called for the public inquiry into her crimes to be halted, arguing there is now “overwhelming and compelling” evidence undermining her baby murder convictions.

Lawyers for the former nurse took the extraordinary step of writing to Lady Justice Thirlwall on Monday to say that the inquiry – which is due to end on Wednesday – should be suspended immediately.

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Wes Streeting warns hundreds more health quangos could face axe

Health secretary says the scrapping of NHS England is ‘beginning, not end’ of bid to slash ‘bloated bureaucracy’

The health secretary has declared that scrapping NHS England is “the beginning, not the end” and has vowed to continue “slashing bloated bureaucracy”.

Wes Streeting suggested hundreds more quangos could be in the line of fire after the prime minister announced this week the end of the body overseeing the health service in England.

Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, Streeting said: “The abolition of NHS England – the world’s largest quango – is the beginning, not the end.

“Patients and staff alike can see the inefficiency and waste in the health service. My team and I are going through budgets line by line, with a relentless focus on slashing bloated bureaucracy.”

NHS England has managed the health service since 2012, when it was established to cut down on political interference in the NHS – something Streeting described as an act of “backside-covering” to avoid blame for failures.

But on Thursday, Keir Starmer announced this would come to an end as he unexpectedly revealed the government would abolish NHS England in an effort to avoid “duplication”.

In his Sunday Telegraph article, Streeting suggested more was to come, saying the new NHS England chair, Penny Dash, had “identified hundreds of bodies cluttering the patient safety and regulatory landscape, leaving patients and staff alike lost in a labyrinth of paperwork and frustration”.

The move towards scrapping NHS England and other health-related quangos marks a change in direction for Streeting, who in January said he would not embark upon a reorganisation of the NHS.

He told the Health Service Journal he could spend “a hell of a lot of time” on reorganisation “and not make a single difference to the patient interest”, saying instead he would focus on trying to “eliminate waste and duplication”.

But in the Telegraph article, Streeting said he had heard former Conservative health ministers “bemoan” not abolishing NHS England, adding: “If we hadn’t acted this week, the transformational reform the NHS needs wouldn’t have been possible.”

The government expects scrapping NHS England will take two years and save “hundreds of millions of pounds” that can be spent on frontline services.

But during the week, Downing Street would not be drawn on how many people were facing redundancy as a result of the changes.

The Guardian reported on Friday that the jobs cull from the government’s radical restructuring of the NHS will be at least twice as big as previously thought.

The staff shakeout caused by NHS England’s abolition and unprecedented cost-cutting elsewhere will mean the number of lost posts will soar from the 10,000 expected to between 20,000 and 30,000.

Many thousands more people who work for the NHS’s 42 integrated care boards (ICBs) in England will see their roles axed, as well as the 10,000 working for NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) who have already been earmarked to go.

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30,000 jobs could go in Labour’s radical overhaul of NHS

Loss of staff will be at least twice as big as thought, as new NHS England chief tells regional boards to cut costs by 50%

The jobs cull from the government’s radical restructuring of the NHS will be at least twice as big as previously thought, with other parts of the health service now being downsized too.

The staff shakeout caused by NHS England’s abolition and unprecedented cost-cutting elsewhere will mean the number of lost posts will soar from the 10,000 expected to between 20,000 and 30,000.

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Wes Streeting’s ‘high stakes’ abolition of NHS England will cut 10,000 jobs

Reforms proposed by health secretary predicted to save as much as £500m but could be distraction for ministers

Wes Streeting has ordered a “high stakes” reorganisation of the NHS that will scrap 10,000 jobs in an attempt to free up cash for frontline care.

Experts warned that the move to abolish NHS England and fold it into the Department of Health could distract ministers from the urgent job of ending long waits for treatment, while trade unions expressed concern about the “shambolic” announcement of job cuts for public servants.

Join Wes Streeting in conversation with Pippa Crerar discussing England’s health and social care system and how Labour plans to turn it around on Tuesday 25 March 2025, 7pm-8.15pm (GMT). Book tickets here or at guardianlive.com

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UK politics: Unison attacks ‘shambolic’ announcement of NHS England’s abolition – as it happened

Union says staff will have been left reeling after surprise news that body will be scrapped

Starmer is now talking about regulatation, and giving examples of where he thinks it has gone too far.

l give you an example. There’s a office conversion in Bingley, which, as you know, is in Yorkshire. That is an office conversion that will create 139 homes.

But now the future of that is uncertain because the regulator was not properly consulted on the power of cricket balls. That’s 139 homes. Now just think of the people, the families, the individuals who want those homes to buy, those homes to make their life and now they’re held up. Why? You’ll decide whether this is a good reason because I’m going to quote this is the reason ‘because the ball strike assessment doesn’t appear to be undertaken by a specialist, qualified consultant’. So that’s what’s holding up these 139 homes.

When we had those terrible riots … what we saw then, in response, was dynamic. It was strong, it was urgent. It was what I call active government, on the pitch, doing what was needed, acting.

But for many of us, I think the feeling is we don’t really have that everywhere all of the time at the moment.

The state employs more people than we’ve employed for decades, and yet look around the country; do you see good value everywhere? Because I don’t.

I actually think it’s weaker than it’s ever been, overstretched, unfocused, trying to do too much, doing it badly, unable to deliver the security that people need.

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Covid, five years on: UK ‘still not ready to protect the population’

Scientific triumphs were made in the battle against the pandemic, but the memories and lessons are already in danger of being lost

On 9 March 2020, Martin Landray was studying the likely impact of Covid-19 as it started to sweep Britain. What was needed, he realised, was a method for pinpointing cheap, effective drugs that might limit the impact of the Sars-CoV-2 virus that was filling UK hospitals with ­dangerously ill patients.

Within 10 days, Landray – working with Oxford University colleague Peter Horby – had set up Recovery, a drug-testing programme that involved thousands of doctors and nurses working with tens of ­thousands of Covid-19 patients in UK hospitals.

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Ministers delaying inquiry into treatment of migrant carers, RCN says

Exclusive: Nursing union says it continues to receive complaints about low pay, unfit housing and illegal fees

Ministers are dragging their heels on an investigation into the mistreatment of migrant carers, the country’s largest nursing union has said, as it continues to receive complaints about low pay, substandard accommodation and illegal fees.

Nicola Ranger, the general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, has written to Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, to urge her to speed up her promised investigation into the abuse of foreign care workers.

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Swab test could help UK women avoid invasive checks for womb cancer

New method reported to cut number of false positives by 87% has been registered with regulator for approval

A new swab test could help hundreds of thousands of women a year in the UK who may have womb cancer avoid having an often painful invasive procedure to detect the disease.

About 800,000 women annually go to see a GP because they are suffering from abnormal bleeding from their uterus and then undergo uncomfortable and stressful investigations to identify the cause.

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One in three NHS doctors so tired their ability to treat patients is affected, survey finds

Exclusive: Medics more sleep deprived now than during Covid crisis amid staff shortages and surging demand

One in three doctors in the NHS are so tired that their ability to treat patients is impaired, according to a report that reveals medics are more sleep deprived now than during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Longer hours, staff shortages and soaring demand for care on top of the backlog that worsened during the Covid crisis are causing extreme tiredness among doctors, leading to memory blanks, problems concentrating and patient harm.

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Coroner warns about NHS physician associates after misdiagnosis and death of woman

Pamela Marking, suffering severe stomach issues, diagnosed in hospital with nosebleed and sent home by PA

A coroner has issued a warning about the role of physician associates in NHS hospitals after a woman with severe abdominal problems was wrongly diagnosed as having a nosebleed and died four days later.

The family of Pamela Marking, 77, were under the mistaken impression she had been seen by a doctor when she was examined in an emergency department, rather than a physician associate (PA) with far less training.

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Only 5% of UK medical school entrants are working class, data shows

Sutton Trust says underrepresentation of poorer students is ‘outrageous’ but number has doubled in 10 years to 2022

Students from working class backgrounds still only make up 5% of entrants to medical schools across the UK, a proportion that has doubled over the past decade, analysis has found.

The research, conducted by the Sutton Trust and University College London (UCL), looked at almost 94,000 applicants to UK medical schools between 2012 and 2022, which represent almost half of all UK medical applicants.

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Wes Streeting to axe thousands of jobs at NHS England after ousting of chief executive

NHS staff fear power grab by health department as health secretary looks to shrink body due to ‘duplication’ of roles

Wes Streeting will axe thousands of jobs at NHS England after his ousting of its chair and chief executive in what health service staff fear is a power grab.

The health secretary’s plan follows Amanda Pritchard’s shock announcement on Monday that she was stepping down as the organisation’s chief executive next month.

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NHS doctor who ‘glorified terrorist violence’ wins deportation challenge

Home Office moved to cancel Menatalla Elwan’s leave to remain over posts on Hamas’s 7 October attack

An Egyptian NHS doctor who “glorified terrorist violence” by mocking Israeli civilians fleeing the Hamas attacks in October 2023 has won a legal challenge against deportation.

In one of three social media posts hours after the attacks began, Dr Menatalla Elwan, 34, who worked at an NHS trust in Liverpool, reposted footage of music festivalgoers running from Hamas terrorists and wrote “if it was your home, you would stay and fight”, accompanied by a smiling face emoji.

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NHS facing ‘crisis of public trust’ as most people fear being failed by A&E services

Public concern about NHS is worrying and frightening, says leading emergency doctor after poll revealed

Three in four people in the UK fear getting stuck on a trolley in a hospital corridor or an ambulance not arriving after dialling 999, prompting claims that the NHS is facing “a crisis of public trust”.

Huge numbers also worry about their local A&E not having enough beds (77%) and not being able to get care at their GP surgery (70%), research also found.

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Dissatisfaction among gen Z staff is ‘ticking timebomb’ for NHS

Warning from the Royal College of Nursing is based on Nuffield Trust analysis of NHS England staff surveys

The NHS in England is facing a “ticking timebomb” when it comes to retaining young staff, nursing leaders have warned, after new analysis showed its generation Z workers are becoming more stressed and unhappy over time.

A new report by the Nuffield Trust shows soaring dissatisfaction rates among staff in the health service’s youngest cohort, aged 21 to 30 – based on analysis of NHS surveys.

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