The new Health Secretary, James Murray, has vowed to continue Wes Streeting’s work. While this does not inspire optimism, Murray could well adopt a more constructive approach.
Wes Streeting has left the NHS and the nation’s health in a dire situation leaving much urgent work for his successor. Murray, Labour and Co-operative MP for Ealing North since 2019, is the 9th Health Secretary since 2018, and like all his predecessors has little relevant experience. It is of course common in the UK parliamentary system for government ministers to have no prior professional experience or specialist expertise in the departments they run. This makes them dependent at least initially on senior civil servants and policy advisors and one hopes that they will also learn by being prepared to listen to the workforce.
Murray is a former Treasury minister who, according to the Guardian ‘has spent most of his parliamentary career toeing the party line, staying out of the headlines and quietly burnishing his credentials as a reliable cabinet colleague’. Born and raised in west London, where his mother was a Labour councillor, Murray studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford before working for Emily Thornberry and then moving into local government. An Islington councillor from 2006-16, he was then appointed Deputy Mayor of London for housing and residential development, overseeing the affordable homes programme. Reputed to be a tough negotiator, he has also worked as a management consultant.
In addition to a short stint on the health and social care select committee during the Covid pandemic in 2020, Murray has been an NHS patient, having been diagnosed and treated effectively for myasthenia gravis – a serious condition that causes muscle weakness. During his maiden speech in March 2020, he told MPs they ‘must win the battle for the NHS and the social care system that we need’ and that he would ‘fight every day for our NHS with the strength that it has given me back’. On his personal website, cutting NHS waiting times also features as a priority, along with creating more evening and weekend appointments, ‘paid for by a crackdown on tax avoidance and non-doms’.
Regarding Keir Starmer he has commented: ‘the PM has said more needs to change and we need to offer people more hope. The right thing is not for us to turn inward but to get on with what we were elected to do.’ Murray’s voting record shows he has consistently backed ministers on controversial legislation, including welfare overhauls, winter fuel changes and border security measures, but also voted in favour of the assisted dying bill and for fewer obstacles to access for abortion. He has a reputation for caution and discipline and is regarded as one of a generation of loyal, managerial Labour politicians elevated once Starmer became Labour leader. Unlike his predecessor, he has accepted very little in the way of donations, and so far, nothing from the realm of private healthcare.
Murray says he’s ‘deeply honoured to be appointed’ to his new brief and plans to continue ‘Wes Streeting’s brilliant work on such a critical mission’. Among the challenges with which he is now faced are long waiting lists, the danger of missing promised targets by the next election, corridor care, resolving the long running resident doctors’ dispute, and easing the NHS Modernisation Bill through parliament. The Royal College of Nursing was quick off the mark to call on him for delivery of improvements needed across health and care, including long-overdue reform of pay and career progression for nursing staff, to be top of the agenda. While the care sector has not responded to his appointment, the National Care Forum’s chief executive complained of ‘slim pickings for adult social care in the King’s speech, adding that the timeframes set by the government for the Casey Commission report ‘have served to undermine the government’s commitment to any urgency attached to desperately needed reform and the development of a National Care Service’.
The hope for many NHS staff is that their working conditions might over time be dramatically improved, including safe staffing requirements being met. Any new Health Secretary needs to gain insight into the realities of the difficulties faced by NHS staff and the service they work in. Murray ought to listen to the concerns of NHS Staff and their representative unions, and do what Streeting failed to: improve the working conditions for NHS staff.
We are anxious to meet with James Murray and hope he will turn around this Labour government’s weak record on the NHS. If he really wants to ensure that we ‘win the battle for the NHS and the social care system that we need’ our message is clear: to achieve effectiveness, equity and resilience in health and care, we need to build a consensus involving the public and all key stakeholders based on: 1. core values of decency, security, justice and compassion; 2. understanding of evidence about the level and nature of health needs and how to achieve the three goals of effectiveness, equity and resilience; 3. the myths that hold health, care and support services back must be exposed, for example, that they represent costs rather than assets, that they are unaffordable, that privatisation brings efficiency and that public health is solely about personal choice. Now is the time for James Murray to work towards delivering on his commitment to ‘‘fight every day for our NHS with the strength that it has given me back’.
I would hope that he continues reducing NHS waiting times. Also inject more money into staff training and development. Also I expect him to stop investing in AI systems such as Palantir and invest in our own technology for safe and confidential harvesting of our personnel data. American companies such as Palantir ran by Peter Theil should not have access to our personnel data, nor get their feelers into our NHS in anticipation and encouraging the privatisation of our health service. That’s one of my biggest worries. Otherwise, they must keep up the good work.
Thank you for the information about James Murray. I hope he will do as you suggest and listen to NHS workers. I certainly disagree with him when he says that Wes Streeting did brilliant work as that is not how I see it at all. Let’s hope he will fight every day for our NHS with the strength that it gave him back.
Interesting
Wes Streeting voted 94% with the government over the last year. Janes Murray voted 7%. I don’t have such high hopes. Hope he proves me wrong.
Sorry, James Murray voted 97%.
Streeting achieved nothing in his stint. We need a final battlefield to save it from total privatisation. It is NOT FOR PROFIT.
You can get people to sign numerous petitions, use MP writing campaigns, and attend marches with a Bloc on the NHS; but none of that is enough to show the English they are losing their NHS. The English psyche is based on whinging, whining, and fatalism that nothing will change, so waste of time doing anything!! That is why so far, nothing IS CHANGING!! You need to attack the media for its none reporting of the NHS crisis of being plunged into privatisation, of the Government playing political games with the NHS, and of the mainstream media being owned by billionaires supporting the principle of a US based private healthcare. Lobby publicly all media outlet HQs via demonstrations outside. Have a single issue – privatisation of the NHS by stealth – march and rally across the country with a mainstream demo in London. Attack the Government’s lying and misleading mantra of “an NHS free at the point of delivery” which blinds the public and confirms the attitude of politicians that the public don’t care who delivers their healthcare as long as it remains free. It is not free and never has been – our taxes and National Insurance pay for it!! MPs should be listed and names and shamed about payment they receive from private healthcare and about people like Samantha Jones, Alan Milburn etc. All this needs coalescing into one national organisation solely for the purpose of saving the NHS. Tagging onto other campaigns and marches is not enough!
I’m extremely sceptical that any KONP lobbying of Murray will achieve anything, and the BMA have just decided to resume the Resident Doctors strike after meeting him. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8xw2vvlxeko. Even if Murray were sympathetic, he is surrounded by Milburn, Kibasi, Mackey, Sam Jones et al and is only in post at Starmer’s invite, so he would have little room to move even if he wanted to. It makes much more sense to me that we focus on allies and potential allies within the union membership, than to pretend that we have the power to change gov’t policy through lobbying Murray.
I live in Wales and realise that “health” is a devolved issue. However, as Aneurin Bevan, creator of the NHS was a proud Welshman, I feel strongly about the NHS.
Any Health Secretary tampers with the NHS at their peril! Yes, it has its faults but, overall, it remains a jewel in this country’s crown.