Keir Starmer will clash with his health secretary Wes Streeting today as he skips PMQs to attend a 75th birthday celebration of the NHS at Westminster Abbey.
The service will be attended by Rishi Sunak, as well as NHS chiefs and the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh to ‘pay tribute’ to the health service.
It will feature prayers read by Health Secretary Steve Barclay and testimonies given by recipients of the service.
Both Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak will give readings at the service.
Sir Keir Starmer’s attendance in particular will clash, however, with the warning given by his Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting, who less than a week ago warned that the country has to stop treating the NHS like a religion.
Mr Streeting told Times Radio that the NHS is a “service not a shrine”, adding we should stop treating it like “a national religion”.
“The NHS is not the envy of the world. It’s a service not a shrine. We’ve got to stop thinking of it as a national religion and make sure that it is an institution and a system that delivers the best outcomes.
“It’s got the potential to do that, but it does needs reform. And just as only Nixon could go to China, I’d wager that only Labour is capable of reforming the NHS.”
Politicians from all parties will spend the day marking the health service’s birthday, with Steve Barclay, Keir Starmer and Wes Streeting all publishing opinion pieces across the media.
Health minister, and nurse, Maria Caulfield told Times Radio this morning that the NHS is safe in Conservative Hands, pointing out that for all the claims from left wing figures that the Tories want to privatise the service, they’ve run if for 48 out of its 75 years.
She also pointed out waiting lists in England are improving faster than in Labour-run Wales.
Keir Starmer, writing in the Mirror, said his “long days and nights in hospital” with his ill mother “shaped me profoundly” and is “why I now see it as my job to get the NHS off life support”.
He tells NHS staff: “I know you don’t want more empty claps – you want change”.
“Because without that change, the struggles endured over the last decade will continue and patients will suffer, staff will burn out.
“The truth is, the NHS is a service, not a shrine.”
Rishi Sunak has been criticised for skipping PMQs to attend the NHS service, as he’s also missing next week’s session to attend the NATO summit in Lithuania.
Since entering No. 10 he’s missed 21 percent of his scheduled PMQs sessions, the worst attendance record of any PM since 1979.
