{"id":83662,"date":"2025-07-03T06:38:49","date_gmt":"2025-07-03T05:38:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=83662"},"modified":"2025-07-03T07:52:02","modified_gmt":"2025-07-03T06:52:02","slug":"wes-streetings-limited-vision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2025\/07\/03\/wes-streetings-limited-vision\/","title":{"rendered":"Wes Streeting’s limited vision"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wes Streeting has written an article for The Guardian<\/a> on his vision for the NHS, which will come out today.<\/p>\n

Cut out his self-defence and the padding, and two paragraphs appear to relate to his actual plan. They say:<\/p>\n

\n

Today, the prime minister will launch our 10-year plan for health, to radically reimagine healthcare. More care will be available on your doorstep and from your own home, with thousands more GPs. Services and resources will be moved out of hospitals and into the community. New neighbourhood health centres[?]<\/strong>\u00a0will house doctors, nurses, physios, therapists, tests, scans and urgent care under one roof, built around patients\u2019 convenience.<\/p>\n

AI technology will liberate frontline staff from the drudgery of admin, giving them time to care. Saving just 90 seconds of data entry and note-taking per appointment would be the equivalent of hiring an extra 2,000 GPs. For patients, tech will make booking appointments and managing your care as easy as doing your shopping online.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That rather weird question mark is, by the way, in the original text.<\/p>\n

So, what is the vision? It is two-fold.<\/p>\n

First, they will build health centres. Such centres were the epicentre of the vision of Alan Milburn when he was the health secretary under Blair, and they failed badly, with everyone eventually walking away from them with a sigh of relief. To work, they had to look like hospitals. They were, therefore, remote, big, duplicative, and a waste of money when we already had hospitals and GP surgeries which were much nearer people. Milburn is back, advising Streeting. He has obviously forgotten his past failure and is trying again.<\/p>\n

And thereafter, everything is down to tech. Not patient care. Not tackling the causes of ill health. No regulation to prevent the addictions that are affecting people's well-being. No, it's all just down to tech. Speech recognition software, in fact, which has been available for a very long time, and gets a great deal wrong when linked to AI. That is it.<\/p>\n

Oh, and there will be an app. Of course, there's always an app now.<\/p>\n

If this is a vision, I am French, and I most definitely am not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wes Streeting has written an article for The Guardian on his vision for the NHS, which will come out today. Cut out his self-defence and
 Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,87,118,128],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ethics","category-health","category-labour","category-nhs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83662"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83673,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83662\/revisions\/83673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}