Health and Social Care Secretary speech on health inequalities
Source: gov.uk (2025-06-25)

Wes Streeting spoke at Blackpool Football club on reducing health inequalities.

Thank you very much, Simon. And thanks to all of you for coming to join us this morning here at Bloomfield Road.

I just want to echo, first of all, what Simon said about the club and about the impact it has through the trust of people in the community, particularly in terms of the work it does with young people, giving people opportunities or better life chances.

It’s a reminder that it’s something that government has to do, and I believe very strongly we can’t do without a good and active government.

But it’s also a reminder that whether we’re talking about creating health or education and life chances, the government can’t do it on our own.

And if we try to, we won’t have as much impact as if we work with partners.

So I just want to say a massive thank you to everyone here at the club for the work that you do as a proper community-rooted club.

This is a town that occupies a special place in my heart through a lot of happy memories from visits to Pleasure Beach as a kid.

I’ve got family up the road in Preston, too. And National Union of Students conferences in Winter Gardens during my student years, some of which I can still remember.

But as Health and Social Care Secretary, Blackpool is on my mind for less happy reasons: its health outcomes, which are not only poor, but unjust.

England is not an especially large nation. Yet the inequalities between us are huge.

Travel 30 miles down the road to Ribble Valley and men live for 8 years longer.

A baby girl born here in Blackpool will live 7 years less than one born in Wokingham.

She will fall into ill health 18 years earlier in life.

As the report by the Chief Medical Officer on health in coastal communities puts it, in many working-class towns like this one, people are growing old before their time.

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And the gap between the health of the poorest and wealthiest parts of our country have widened.

These stark health inequalities are not just down to the health service alone.

They are also caused by poverty, a lack of good work, damp housing, dirty air, and the sporting, travel and cultural opportunities which are afforded to the privileged few being denied to the many.

It is why I have been driving the NHS so hard to reform, improve productivity and cut waste.

Because every pound spent on diagnosing and treating illness is a pound that can’t be spent on tackling the causes of ill health.

In the coming days, we will be publishing our 10 year plan, which will set out how this mission-driven government will tackle illness, keep disease at bay, and reduce the health inequalities that shame our society.

Our 10 year plan will not just be a plan for the NHS, but a plan for health.

It will tackle illness at source through a whole-society approach, with a shift in focus from treating sickness to preventing it in the first place.

Already this government is taking action. The Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson, is rolling out primary school breakfast clubs and free school lunches to millions of children, so they walk into the classroom with hungry minds not hungry bellies.

Angela Rayner, Deputy Prime Minister, is building a new generation of homes, and along with our Business Secretary, Jonny Reynolds, introducing sick pay from day one in the job.

The Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has given workers on the minimum wage a £1,400 pay rise this year.

The Work and Pensions Secretary, Liz Kendall, is giving disabled people the right to work, so they can take up a job opportunity, knowing if things go wrong they can go back to the support they had before without the jeopardy or fear of missing out or being back to square one.

Our Energy Secretary, Ed Miliband, is extending the Warm Home Discount, helping keep millions more households warm this winter.

And our Environment Secretary, Steve Reed, is cleaning up our rivers and seas from sewage.

So, you can see that just those steps we’ve already taken less than a year in office that Keir Starmer’s government is determined to lift people out of poverty, tackle inequality and improve the health of our society.

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Today, I want to set out how our reforms to the NHS will fundamentally improve the health of working-class communities.

NHS founded on principle of equity

The National Health Service was founded to end grotesque inequality in access to healthcare.

Before 1948, working people avoided the doctor unless they absolutely needed to see one, because of the costs being so prohibitive.

Diseases such as rickets, scurvy and diphtheria were common amongst children.

The solution was revolutionary - universal healthcare, publicly funded, free at the point of need.

And as the NHS’s founder, my predecessor, Nye Bevan, promised, the NHS lifted the shadow from millions of homes and eradicated the fear of illness from people’s hearts.

It has been one of the great levellers of our society. The greatest institution this country has ever built.

But as the NHS was neglected and left to decline after 2010, it contributed toward the widening gap between rich and poor.

Two-tier healthcare

Waiting times soared, and a 2-tier healthcare system emerged, where those who can afford it pay to go private, and everyone else was being left behind.

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The NHS was never intended to just be a safety net for those who cannot afford to pay.

Such a system would be doomed to ever-declining quality care.

Taxpayers would question why they continue to pay for a service they don’t use.

Inevitably, the NHS would become a poor service for poor people.

Since its foundation, we have always aspired to an NHS that is universal in provision so that everyone receives high-quality care.

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With our Plan for Change, the NHS is on the road to recovery. Since the general election, we have:

recruited an extra 1,700 GPs to the frontline

delivered an extra 3.6 million appointments for planned care and delivered on our promised 2 million in our first year

diagnosed an extra 187,000 suspected cancer patients on time

cut waiting lists in the month of April for the first time in 17 years

cut waiting lists to their lowest level in 2 years

cut waiting lists by almost a quarter of a million patients

Each one of those patients we have taken off the waiting list is free from pain and in some cases disability, because of the decisions this government has taken.

I’m not here to do victory laps. I know that for the almost a quarter of a million people who have received faster treatment, there are more than 7 million cases still waiting.

We’ve done a lot but there’s so much more to do. Especially for towns like Blackpool.

Tackling inequalities

While there are so many social determinants of ill-health that need to be addressed, the fact is that the NHS doesn’t do enough to address the unjust, unequal way in which illness presents itself in our country.

In fact, it sometimes entrenches it.

General practice was neglected and declined across the board for more than a decade [political content removed].

But that doesn’t explain why there are 300 more patients per GP in the poorest communities, compared with the richest.

As I spoke about on Monday, far too many parents and their babies have been failed by maternity services.

But failing services don’t explain why Black women are almost 3 times more likely to die from childbirth than White women.

Black men are twice as likely to get prostate cancer than White men.

But given we know the risk is greater, and given we know how to catch cancer early, that doesn’t explain these sorts of inequalities given the evidence is there.

For those in greatest need often receive the worst-quality healthcare.

This fact flies in the face of the values upon which the NHS was founded.

A core ambition of our 10 year plan is to restore the promise of the NHS, to provide first class healthcare for everyone in our country.

Whoever you are, whatever your background, wherever you live.

NHS solutions

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It has fallen to this government to rebuild the NHS for all of us.

We are starting where the need is greatest.

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We’ve sent crack teams of top clinicians to hospitals around the country, where the highest numbers of people are off work, off sick, to help them cut waiting lists faster. Therefore, getting people not just back to health but back to work.

We are delivering on our manifesto commitment to fill in dental deserts, by paying dentists extra to come to work in underserved areas.

And today I can announce that we will go further.

In recent years, billions of pounds have been put aside for NHS trusts who let their spending get out of control and run up deficits.

It’s essentially a bailout fund for poor financial management.

I am working with Jim Mackey, Chief Executive of the NHS, to end that culture of rewards for failure.

Thanks to the reforms we’ve made to bear down on wasteful spending, the fund will not go to trusts which run deficits this year.

We can reinvest that money in the frontline, so it isn’t spent on rewarding poor performance but to improving poor health.

The £2.2 billion will fund more effective care - such as innovative medicines, modern technology and services that keep people out of hospital - all going to the places where they are most needed.

GP practices serving more deprived areas receive 10% less funding per needs-adjusted patient than poorer parts of our country and have 300 more patients per GP as a result.

So, working with the British Medical Association, we will review how health need is reflected in funding for general practice (known to the wonks in the room as the Carr-Hill formula), with a sharp focus on money following need.

Where health needs are greatest and GPs fewest, we will prioritise investment to rebuild your NHS and rebuild the health of your community.

NHS as anchor institution

I said in my first week in this job, the NHS has a part to play in dragging our country out of the sluggish growth and low productivity the government inherited.

It is the biggest employer in many towns in England.

In coastal towns like Blackpool, where far more people are off work due to long-term sickness, the NHS has a dual role to play.

Not just getting patients off waiting lists and back to work, although we are doing that.

The health service should also act as an engine of local economic growth, giving opportunities in training and work to local people.

Working in the NHS is rightly seen as a high status, secure job.

But many people see it as unachievable and out of their reach.

On a visit to King George Hospital in my own neck of the woods, I saw first-hand a brilliant programme, Project SEARCH, that supports 17 to 19 year olds who are learning disabled and/or autistic, with internships that give them experience of a wide range of paying jobs, as well as coaching on things like preparing a CV and interview skills.

One of them, Muhammed Patel, shared with me how much he had loved the experience and hoped for a career in the NHS.

Months later, he messaged me on Instagram to tell me he’s got a job.

He’s not the only one.

Project SEARCH aims to get every young person on their programme a job in the NHS or with another employer and is succeeding.

So today we are launching a new pilot, backed by £5 million, to help recruit an additional 1,000 people to the NHS from areas worst hit by unemployment.

The programme will offer a ladder into the world of work for people who find it hardest to break out of unemployment, including over 50s, unpaid carers and disabled people.

They will gain the skills needed in health and care, alongside support with job applications and work placements, kickstarting what will hopefully be a long-term and rewarding career in our health and care sectors, where they will more than repay the investment we’re making in them today.

Patient power revolution

Finally, our 10 year plan will address one of the starkest health inequalities, which is often written out of this conversation.

It is the unequal access in our society to information, choice and control over our own healthcare.

When I was diagnosed with kidney cancer, colleagues in Parliament asked where I was being treated and who my surgeon was.

They just wanted to make sure I was receiving the best possible care.

Luckily, the NHS had already assigned me a world-class surgeon who saved my life.

But those are questions that my mum, a cleaner here in Lancashire, would never think to ask and would certainly never ask.

When the wealthy receive a diagnosis, they already know the best surgeons and can push to get the best care.

But working-class people can’t.

If the wealthy are told to wait months for treatment, they can shop around. But working-class people can’t.

And if the wealthy want instant information about their own health, they can pay for an app that allows them to speak to a doctor over the phone, 24/7.

But working-class people can’t.

This is not just grossly unfair. It presents an existential risk to the health service.

More than any other age group, this generation of young people are prepared to opt-out of the NHS.

Last year the biggest increase in private hospital admissions was for people under the age of 40.

Almost half of young people say they would consider going private if they needed care.

The NHS feels increasingly slow and outdated to the generation that organises their lives at the touch of a button.

If you get annoyed at Deliveroo not getting your dinner to you in less than an hour, how will you feel being told to wait a year for a knee operation?

A failure to modernise risks this generation walking away from the NHS, first for their healthcare and then with their taxes.

People won’t accept paying higher and higher taxes to fund a health service that no longer meets their needs.

And the lack of control people feel over their own lives is made worse by an analogue, ‘computer says no’, NHS.

We can only close this inequality and shut down this risk to the NHS’s future through a revolution in patient power.

The ambition of our 10 year plan is nothing less than to provide NHS patients with the same ease, convenience, power, choice and control that’s afforded to private patients.

The good news is that technology gives us the opportunity to democratise healthcare in a way never before possible.

It can empower patients with choice and control and make managing our healthcare as convenient as doing our shopping or banking online.

Technology can be the great leveller.

Look at what Martin Lewis, the Money Saving Expert, has done for personal finances.

For ordinary people who sign up to his newsletter - and I’m one of them - who could never afford their own financial adviser, it is simple and easy to make your hard-earned money go further - if you’ve got access to the right advice.

Our 10 year plan for health will do the same for NHS patients, giving them easy access to information to help them improve their health.

We will introduce a tool on the NHS App called My Companion.

It will provide all patients with information about their health condition, if they have one, or their procedure, if they need one.

It will get patients answers to questions they forgot or felt too embarrassed to ask in a face-to-face appointment.

So, the next time you’re at an appointment and you’re told something that doesn’t sound right, you will have at your fingertips the information you need to speak up confidently.

And we will give every patient meaningful choice, through a new tool called My Choices.

It will show patients everything from their nearest pharmacy to the best hospital for heart surgery across the country, with patients able to choose based on their preference.

If NHS providers know that their waiting times, health outcomes of their patients, and patient satisfaction ratings will all be publicly available, they will be inspired to respond to patient choice, raise their game and deliver services that patients value.

Not everyone will want a choice.

Many just want their local hospital.

That’s fine and will always be a default option.

But we know that at the root of many inequalities in health outcomes is a failure to listen to patients.

A ‘one size fits all’ approach often misses the distinct needs of women, people from ethnic minority backgrounds or people living in rural communities.

And we will only deal with the grotesque health inequalities in our society by empowering all patients.

Conclusion

In the months leading up to the founding of the NHS, Nye Bevan said:

For a while it may appear that everything is going wrong.

As a matter of fact, everything will be going right because people will be able to complain.

They complain now, but no one hears about it.

He promised that a National Health Service would put a “megaphone to the mouth of every complainant, so that it can be heard all over the country.”

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We have always believed that public services exist to serve the interests of the pupil, the passenger, the patient above all else.

And the driving force behind the work this government does every day is the principle that whatever class you come from, everyone deserves world-class services.

We expect nothing less from what we expect for ourselves, and that is why we’re determined to get our NHS back on its feet, to make sure it’s fit for the future and put power in the hands of every patient. Thank you.