Keir Starmer vows to bring back NHS targets introduced by Tony Blair

Keir Starmer pledges to bring back NHS targets introduced by Tony Blair’s government to reduce chronic patient backlogs

• The Labour leader said his party would focus on ambulance response times

A Labour government would bring back NHS targets introduced under Tony Blair to reduce chronic patient backlogs, Sir Keir Starmer said last night.

The Labour leader said the party would put ambulance response and A&E waiting times at the centre of its healthcare policy if it wins the next general election.

Sir Tony took New Labour to power in 1997 after warning voters they had ’24 hours to save the NHS’, and then introduced a raft of targets to cut hospital waiting lists.

Sir Keir told The i newspaper: ‘The last Labour government did obviously put targets around it so there is a model there that we know can work. They drove the waiting lists down dramatically over two or three years. It will fall to us to do the same thing.’

In a separate interview with the Daily Telegraph, Sir Keir said Labour would be ‘at the forefront of women’s rights’, and backed single-sex wards for hospital patients based on biological sex. 

Keir Starmer (pictured in York on Tuesday) said Labour would put ambulance response and A&E waiting times at the centre of its healthcare policy if it wins the next general election

Tony Blair (pictured in Belfast on Tuesday) took New Labour to power in 1997 after warning voters they had ’24 hours to save the NHS’

It came as health leaders and charities warned that nurses who refuse to provide life-saving cancer care during upcoming strikes will put patients at risk. 

The Royal College of Nursing was last night coming under growing pressure to make a U-turn on plans to abandon cancer patients in pursuit of a bigger pay rise.

The union revealed it will escalate industrial action by demanding that nurses walk out of A&E, intensive care units and cancer wards for the first time later this month.

Michelle Mitchell, the chief executive of Cancer Research UK, said: ‘We urge all parties to work together to ensure that people don’t miss out on life-saving services.’

Miriam Deakin, of NHS Providers, which represents NHS trusts, said: ‘The planned strike with no exceptions for cancer services is a huge worry and risks compromising patients’ care.’

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