Good on Wes Streeting for having the guts to voice hard truths about failings of the NHS

Pull no punches

HARD truths about the failings of the NHS are vital. Good on Wes Streeting for ­having the guts to voice them.

For decades too many have treated it as the national religion, sacrosanct and beyond reproach.

Alamy

And it is typical of prickly senior health service figures to whinge now over the Health Secretary’s robust language.

Briefing the BBC anonymously, they claim that he’s gone overboard.

That if he says the NHS is broken, as it is, it will “spook” patients and put them off seeking help.

But there’s no evidence of that.

Mr Streeting’s criticisms were entirely justified by his own research and the report he commissioned from Lord Darzi.

And NHS leaders should know better than anyone that curing a disease requires a full diagnosis.

Anything less could kill the patient with kindness, as Mr Streeting says.

But we fear this is just the start of the pushback against his efforts to reinvent the service for the 21st Century.

Even if he can drag executives along with him he still has unions to face down.

Their inevitable intransigence over pay, conditions and duties will make these first objections seem a tiny bump in the road.

Sicknote purge

WE are delighted to hear Keir Starmer wanting to get the long-term sick back to work and slash the gigantic benefits bill.

But his actions must be as hard- hitting as his words.

Yes, many among those 2.8million claimants genuinely cannot work.

And, yes, plenty of others could do so if ­Government and employers actively supported them into a new job.

But Sir Keir must get tough too on the huge number swinging the lead.

They developed a taste for taxpayer-funded idleness during Covid and have since found GPs willing to sign them off in the blink of an eye to avoid hassle.

It is time cases were reassessed by hard-nosed, dispassionate specialists who, if appropriate, can strip them of their handouts.

It was a good idea when the Tories suggested it this year and it remains so.

The dole is for those in genuine need, not a lifestyle choice.

No, minister

TOO many of our new Labour Government haven’t yet realised they are in power.

They still imagine themselves as a heroic resistance movement against the Left’s traditional foes.

So Angela Eagle interrupts her incessant attacks on the wicked Tories to give Donald Trump a kicking.

To her, his immigration rhetoric somehow fed Britain’s summer riots.

But she’s not in opposition now.

She’s a Home Office minister.

And Trump could shortly be President again.

What harm might she have done to Britain already?