Children grew overweight, unhealthy and unhappy under the Conservatives, Labour has claimed – as the NHS becomes the focus of Sir Keir Starmer’s ‘Blame the Tories’ campaign.
Speaking ahead of this week’s publication of a review into the ‘broken’ National Health Service, the Prime Minister said the focus would be on the ‘renewal’ of the NHS for ‘the benefit of future generations’.
The report by Lord Darzi of Denham, a leading surgeon and former health minister, is expected to conclude that children’s health has deteriorated over the past decade, with one in three pupils in some areas leaving primary school overweight.
There has been an 82 per cent rise in hospital admissions for young people with eating disorders over the past five years. The report is also expected to conclude that 50 years of progress on rates of heart disease and strokes have gone into reverse.
Since winning July’s election, the Government’s focus has been on what it says is the dire inheritance from the Tories in terms of the economy and public services.
When Health Secretary Wes Streeting commissioned the report, he said it would be a ‘warts and all’ probe of the state of the NHS to tell ‘hard truths’ about what needs fixing, to provide the basis for a ten-year plan.
‘Honesty is the best policy, and this report will provide patients, staff and myself with a full and frank assessment of the state of the NHS,’ he said.
‘It’s going to take time to turn the NHS around – we were honest about that before the election. Sticking plasters won’t be enough to heal it. It will require fundamental reform.’
Mr Streeting believes that only Labour – which is traditionally more trusted on the NHS than the Conservatives – has the political capital needed to stop the health service from descending into a taxpayer-funded money pit.
The current level of funding for health services in England stands at more than £180 billion.
Lord Darzi is expected to warn of ‘real concerns about the NHS’s capacity and capability to deliver high quality care for children’.
The cancer surgeon found more than 100,000 infants aged up to two were left waiting for more than six hours in A&E departments in England last year – a 60 per cent rise over the past 15 years.
Around 800,000 children and young people are on NHS waiting lists for hospital treatment, with 175,000 waiting between six and 12 months and 35,000 waiting for more than a year.
In addition, nearly 500,000 children and young people are on waiting lists for mental health support, with 160,000 of them waiting for more than 12 months.
The peer also found that children from the most deprived backgrounds are twice as likely to be obese by the time they go into the reception class at primary school – and nearly one in three children in the poorest communities have become obese by Year Six.
He also highlights the problem of falling vaccination rates, which has made outbreaks of measles and other infectious diseases more common, and year-on-year rises of ten per cent in the number of prescriptions for ADHD medications for children and young people.
The number of life-threatening and life-limiting conditions among children has risen by 40 per cent over the past two decades.
Lord Darzi’s report is expected to say: ‘Childhood is precious because it is brief; too many children are spending too much of it waiting for care. It is apparent that the NHS must do better.’
It also found wide variations in the standard of care received by cardiovascular patients, with the time taken for the highest risk heart attack patients to have a rapid intervention to unblock an artery rising by 28 per cent, from an average of 114 minutes in 2014 to 146 minutes in 2023.
Patients in Surrey are likely to receive the procedure in less than 90 minutes, but those 70 miles away in Milton Keynes must wait around four hours. Similar variations occur for stroke patients who receive a brain scan within an hour of arrival at hospital.
In an interview with the BBC, being broadcast today, Sir Keir says: ‘Everybody watching this who has used the NHS, or whose relatives have, know that it’s broken, they know that it’s broken, that is unforgivable, the state of our NHS.’
The Prime Minister says Lord Darzi will claim in his report, being published on Thursday, that the problems come from ‘the money taken out of the NHS, particularly in the early years of the coalition from 2010 onwards, the Lansley reforms, which were hopelessly misconceived… and then of course Covid on top of all that, which has put us in this awful position for the NHS’.
He adds: ‘The last government broke the NHS. Our job now through Lord Darzi is to properly understand how that came about and bring about the reforms, starting with the first steps, the 40,000 extra appointments.
‘But we’ve got to do the hard yards of reform as well.’
‘The impacts of a broken NHS are being felt across the whole of our society – our children included.
‘The challenges we’ve inherited are stark, but I’m determined to fix the foundations so that we not only rebuild our health service, but crucially also reform and renew it for future generations.
‘That also means equipping the NHS to prevent ill health, not just to treat it – so all of us can live longer, healthier lives, from childhood to old age.’
Shadow Health Secretary Victoria Atkins said: ‘All Labour has done in health since the election is issue press releases, appoint cronies and give a budget-busting pay rise to striking junior doctors, with no plans for reform.
‘Labour should stop politicising our children’s health and the NHS if they are serious about reform.’