WES STREETING threatened the NHS today by insisting it must either change or go bust.

The shadow health secretary told the Labour Party conference in Liverpool that rising chronic disease and an ageing population could “bankrupt the NHS,” in a speech that sparked clashes with the representatives of health workers.

Mr Streeting made clear that, in his view, the answer is not more funding: “Reform is even more important than investment.

“Pouring ever-increasing amounts of money into a system that isn’t working is wasteful in every sense.”

However, Unison general secretary Christine McAnea warned that “investment is crucial if patient confidence in the NHS is to be rebuilt,” while backing Labour’s renewed commitment to creating a national care service that could free up hospital space.

Unite general secretary Sharon Graham welcomed the speech, but added that Labour’s plans “must come with a clear workforce plan that includes the reversal of real-terms pay cuts.

“We cannot fix the NHS if we don’t reverse the crippling staff shortages. And we can’t do that if we don’t improve pay and conditions.”

Mr Streeting ducked any reference to private-sector involvement in the NHS, which may well grow under Labour. 

The party’s national executive had broken usual procedures to ensure that this issue was not debated for fear of losing a vote.

Adding to anxiety, former Scottish Labour leader and Blair-era minister Jim Murphy told a fringe meeting that a Starmer government would be “the first fully private-sector government in Labour’s history.”

Among the pledges Mr Streeting did make were a ban on junk food advertisements aimed at children, supervised toothbrushing and “coming down like a ton of bricks” on the vaping industry.

He also promised 700,000 extra NHS dental appointments a year under Labour, but the British Dental Association said that appropriate investment levels were crucial to delivering this.

Mr Streeting claimed that “Labour will never abandon the founding principles of the NHS as a publicly funded public service, free at the point of use. I make the case for reform not in opposition to those principles but in defence of them.”

He said Labour would shift towards prevention, criticising “an NHS that gets to people too late, a hospital-based system geared towards late diagnosis and treatment, delivering poorer outcomes at greater cost.”