Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has set out the party’s election pledges, including to cut hospital waiting lists by providing an extra 40,000 NHS appointments and operations per week.
The plan, which Sir Starmer called the ‘first steps’ they would take if they won an upcoming general election, featured six key commitments, one of which was on the NHS.
This commitment to increase the number of appointments would be funded by ‘cracking down’ on tax avoiders and the non-dom tax status, he said.
Sir Starmer added that Labour had already begun staffing discussions on how they would meet this promise.
In his speech this morning (16 May), he said: ‘The ambition is there, to make that happen we’ve got to operate at weekends and evenings, we’ve got to pay staff for the shifts.
‘That is why we’ve already had the starting discussions about the staff about how that will work because I don’t want to waste any time in the first 100 days of a Labour government on discussions I could be having now, so our ambition is to get that up as quickly as possible.’
Earlier this year, Labour pledged to allow high street opticians to provide outpatient appointments for eye problems, if elected into Government.
Also in January, they announced a child action plan which committed to cutting waiting lists for children’s mental health services by recruiting thousands more staff.
