Speeches by Streeting.

“Waiting lists are coming down, and there are other things. If I think about this winter, which I am sure we will come on to, there are already demonstrable improvements. The fact that we are going into winter without the backdrop of national strikes for the first time in three years is a real improvement for people. Th…”

“That depends on the wider contextual factors. For example, we are already seeing pressures this winter at this moment that we do not normally see until the winter peak—as far as I’m concerned, that is next month, not this month. It is challenging, but there are things that we have done as a Government in the last five …”

“It is a very live issue at the moment. I am currently deciding allocations for different parts of the NHS and social care, taking into account the range of pressures that we are under and the determination to deliver against our manifesto commitment.”

“Over the course of the coming days and weeks, we will be setting out those allocations.”

“Yes, I think we have to do so very early in the new year. I recognise what you are saying, which is that people are making decisions for the next financial year. I would just point out that, notwithstanding the wider pressures on the public finances and the economy, we are in a much better position than we would have b…”

“We are in a much better position with the £26 billion of investment for the coming year. The spending review is now under way, and the Chief Secretary has just written to the Cabinet to get that process going. We will obviously go into that spending review making a strong case for both investment and reform in health a…”

“Again, we have done well on capital out of this Budget. We were never going to be able to deal with 14 years of under-capitalisation and the stark picture painted by Lord Darzi in a single Budget. But what this enables us to do is to invest in the estate and also prioritise some of the investment, particularly in techn…”

“I will bring in Matt as well to reflect on performance and experience over time. On this point, Tom is absolutely right. The Chancellor’s fiscal rule will sometimes be challenging. If I think back to the pressures and choices that some of my Conservative predecessors made, there have been points at which they relied on…”

“That brings us to the final point on our new hospitals programme. As well as the palpable frustrations our communities have experienced, seeing projects delayed and delayed, with promises made and promises broken, there has been a real knock of confidence in the construction industry and supply chain. One thing I have …”

“That is not very cheerful before Christmas! I will send your representations to the Chancellor ahead of the spending review, but I do not feel that pessimistic about the settlement we received, for a few reasons. First, some of the reform agenda is not high cost; it is about spending money we already have more effectiv…”

“On elective recovery and the waiting list, for example, across the NHS we see teams using different ways of organising their clinics to deliver more productivity and more patient throughput within the resources we currently have in the NHS. That is the approach I want to see right across the NHS. As I have said before,…”

“And some of that is low to no cost. And then the final thing—I appreciate we want to get into talking about future finances. I am determined, by the way, to start the process in the next financial year with the budget we have just been given. I am determined to start delivering now the shift out of hospital into commun…”

“I will happily take more questioning on that. But the final thing I want to say is that, as well as thinking about how we spend the new money we are being given by the Chancellor, we spend a huge amount of money on our health and care services today. I am not convinced—neither are the frontline staff and patients—that …”

“I think it is primarily the fault of our predecessors. One of the things about the Darzi investigation is that it spelt out very clearly the consequences, for example, of Andrew Lansley’s disastrous top-down reorganisation. The churn of Secretaries of State in recent years has not helped.”

“So you would like to spend more on social care. Which taxes are you raising to provide more money for social care?”

“That is a very good question. I would say a couple of things about that. First, I think culture is set from the top. One of the reasons I came in and on day one said, “The NHS is broken”—it is not beaten, but it is broken—was to acknowledge from the start a culture in which we can be honest about NHS failings. A politi…”

“But the point is, to go to the solution, that is why I wanted to establish a culture up front where we are honest about challenges within the system. If you are honest about the problems, you can start dealing with them. And that cascades right down to line manager-level conversations on the frontline. The second thing…”

“What I want to see over the course of the 10-year plan implementation is earned autonomy for our best performers, where we are not looking over their shoulders so much and dictating—”

“I think we can let go of some of the control, yes. I am up for a debate throughout the NHS about which targets are useful and which ones are not, because if you are measuring everything you are actually measuring nothing. So, I am up for that debate. There will be more freedom in terms of how to spend their budgets and…”

“That is where planning guidance is very important in the NHS, and we will publish the Government’s mandate to the NHS shortly and the planning guidance in the new year. I am committed to the mental health investment standard. I think it is really important. It is one of the better decisions that my predecessors made an…”