Wes Streeting is convincing, but where’s his plan?

This Labour conference has largely been about Keir Starmer and his ministers making the argument for what they are doing, rather than giving any details of how they plan to achieve it. Wes Streeting’s speech to the hall in Liverpool this morning fitted that pattern. He didn’t announce anything new. Instead, he set out quite how big the challenge was, and made the argument for what Labour planned to do. He told members:

We can only deliver recovery through reform. Without action on prevention, the NHS will be overwhelmed. Without reform to services, we’ll end up putting in more cash for poorer results. That’s the choice. Reform or die. We choose reform.

As with Starmer’s speech yesterday, there were passages in the Health Secretary’s address which were designed to push Labour members out of their comfort zone. Streeting insisted that there would be no change to the founding principles of the NHS, but took on those who argue Labour is just going for ‘privatisation by the back door’. He said:

Now I know there are some on the left who cringe at this. Who view choice as somehow akin to marketisation. But our party has always believed that power should be in the hands of the many, not the few. That public services exist to serve the interests of the pupil, the passenger, the patient above all else. That world class services shouldn’t just be the preserve of the wealthy.

There was one new detail in the speech – probably not worthy of being called an ‘announcement’ – but new all the same. Streeting said the teams of clinicians going into hospitals to cut waiting lists will first focus on the areas with the highest numbers of people off work sick. One of the big missions of this new government is to get people back into work, and there is no point tinkering with welfare reform if the people who do want to work are waiting for treatment. But there is no point talking about NHS reform if you don’t reform social care, and Streeting did acknowledge that, too, promising that the government would starting taking steps ‘towards building a National Care Service’. But we are leaving Labour conference with no more idea about how any of this will happen than we did when we arrived.