NHS must be fixed before spending taps are 'turned on', says health minister

well there's a lot for the government to consider and it is pretty evident that tackling the problems highlighted in the report into the house service is no small challenge well earlier I spoke to the health Minister stepen kenck thank you very much for being on the program tonight well the Dary report has obviously laid bare the challenges in the Health Service but to be honest if you've been to any recently or if you trying to get a doctor's appointment you probably don't need a report to tell you about the challenges in the NHS so I guess my question to you is know the problems what are you going to do to fix it well thanks very much for having me on the show Sophie and you're right that Lord Dary has given us a raw and honest assessment of the the state of our Health and Social care and he's clear that it's in a critical condition and without major surgery it will die so this is this is urgent it's critical and and we've got to get to work on it and we are getting to work on it at PACE I think there's two uh answers to your question question one is what are we doing in the short term in terms of the crisis management that needs to take place and that's about the 40,000 more appointments in the NHS that we're putting in it's about the 1,000 new GPS it's about the 700,000 new dental appointments they're all Manifesto commitments we're working on them right now as we speak then there's the longer term uh question about what we do in terms of Reform and we are bringing forward a 10-year plan for the future of Health and Social care and it's going to be based on three major shifts from hospital to community from sickness to prevention and from analog to digital there's going to be a big National conversation going on uh over the coming weeks and months and we're going to publish that strategy in the spring now you might disagree with this but you know listening to kiss T's response and West treating response it feels to me like you almost cherry-picking parts of the Dary report because yes there's criticism of the conservatives yes there's call for reform but he's also pretty clear that the NHS does need more money he says that there's a shortfall of 37 billion pounds of capital investment which could have rebuilt refurbished every G practice GP practice in the country it could have paid for 40 new hospitals and instead he said we've got crumbling buildings and parts of the NHS operating in decrepit Porter cabin so are you going to fix that 37 billion pound shortfall with very clear that the investment and the reform they're not either or it's both and the two have to go hand inand there absolutely no point turning are you going to shortfall are you going to are you going to address the shortfall in capital investment I'm not talking about General NHS spending pouring money into failing hospitals Lord darzi is very clear he's talking about investment in equipment in Scanners the capital investment that keeps been sucked out of the NHS yeah what I was saying was you should never turn the the tax on until you fix the plumbing so the reform piece of this is absolutely vital but in on your specific point about uh Capital the Prime Minister was clear today Labor is the party of the NHS we founded the NHS we will always stand up for the NHS and provide it with the investment it needs to ensure that it is free at the point of need uh what we have seen is massive underinvestment in capital uh and pouring money into a system where the do the Clint the clinicians and the other staff don't have the tools they need it's a bit like British Airways hiring loads more pilots but not g giving them any planes to fly so we absolutely have to look at the capital budget we've got to fix uh the fact that we've got Rack in so many hospitals I mean you know we're dealing with with a crisis uh we've got to look at that in the round but the the future of capital investment will absolutely be part of the 10-year plan but don't forget that the shift from analog to digital is also a really important part of this imagine if we had an NHS app that actually worked where you could book your GP appointment and and do whatever you needed to do with your local Health Service and that that would save so much in terms of productivity efficiency and indeed uh kit and equipment that we might need so let's not just uh think narrowly about uh capital investment let's think broadly about this shift from analog to digital as well I just want to ask you finally about an interview I did today with Andy hdan who's the chief Economist at the bank of England he thought there should be more money in the NHS he also said to me that he felt the mini fiscal event in July the black hole event was in his words unnecessary and probably unhelpful economically at least it's one thing to reveal a black hole if that is indeed what it is but just leaving that to sit for three months I think was a bad idea what's your reaction to his words well we were elected on a Manifesto that would had two two major commitments in it one was a commitment to change and we're talking today about how we're going to change our Health and Care system and the other was fiscal discipline we're going to build growth and a new economy with public services that are properly funded on the foundations of uh fiscal discipline and sound public finances and it is frankly outrageous that the conservative party left us with a 22 billion pound uh black hole without the reserve spent three times is over so it's absolutely clear that we we needed to take remedial action on that we've had to take some tough decisions but if we can get that stability into our system and into our economy that is what's needed to attract investment uh uh to build growth and to fix our public services and that is what you're going to see from this government in the coming weeks months and years okay thank you very much indeed thanks s