Wes Streeting, the UK's new Health Minister is a Cancer Survivor

This article was first published on my Patheos blog as UK Health Minister: Cancer Patient, Christian, Gay, Realist

I was going to publish this yesterday but the political violence directed against Donald Trump struck me as something I ought to write about, especially after witnessing a peaceful transition of power over here in the UK. Sir Keir even evoked the Christian concept of Servant Leadership as fundamental to his premiership. As we enter the second working week of the new UK government all feels calm and we are already used to having a Labour government. We hope the psychodrama of the years of Tory rule is over. Sir Keir looked very at home in the USA and his visit to the Oval Office and the NATO conference.

The first working week of the government has seen a dazzling array of policy announcements and activity from all the new ministers. There are a number of really interesting characters in Sir Keir Starmer’s new cabinet. Before the election I listened to a fascinating interview with one of them, our new Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Wes Streeting. It was a rare departure from the usual carefully choreographed policy-based interviews, and this one went behind the politician to hear about the man.

After an era where it has felt like the leaders of the NHS and Department of Health and Social Care have not appeared to me to be patient-centred, it is refreshing that Wes Streeting is a cancer survivor, like me. He recovered well from kidney cancer that was caught early rather than languishing on waiting lists as his cancer grew as too many are today.

In a huge departure from the string of Eton and Oxford private educated ministers, Wes grew up in the East End of London. One of his Grandfathers knew the Kray twins and was an armed robber. His other grandfather was a Christian. Very unusually for a UK politician Wes stated on the interview that he too was a Christian. He said he believed in the Virgin birth and also in the physical resurrection of Jesus. He also stated that he was gay. These days in the UK it is much harder for a politician to come out as a Christian than it is to come out as gay.

Typically in the UK Christian politicians are hounded out of office or vilified during an election campaign. Sadly this appears to mostly because of the perception that Christians hate gay people. Perhaps because of his sexual orientation Wes has escaped this opposition. This interview is a great insight into the man now leading our health and social care services. Since this is such a vital role, Christians will do well to pray for him with this insight.

Watch the Interview

Hopefully his faith will shape Streeting’s time in office, leading him to be honest and face the problems that the NHS has face on. That and the fact that he has been a cancer patient, so understands the NHS from a patent’s perspective.

It is now the policy of the Government that our NHS is broken.
It will be the mission of my department, every member of this government, and the 1.4 million people who work in the NHS, to turn our health service around.
That work starts now.pic.twitter.com/G6tJlOWuLf
— Wes Streeting MP (@wesstreeting) July 5, 2024

On his first day he declared that the NHS was broken and that was now the official policy of the department. I hope this means he will address the major issues in the NHS. It is not only a mater of a lack of money. It is also about how the money has been wasted on ridiculous layers of highly paid management and roles like diversity managers. Streamlining the management would allow us to have more doctors and nurses.

There is also a couple of huge controversies the NHS faces. One is the terrible scandal of infected blood which lasted decades. But the cover up and gaslighting that happened in that area happens today in so many others. It seems our NHS is not any better than the Post Office and routinely blames and harasses whistle blowers.

The NHS is often described as one of the worst possible employers, which simply cannot be right. The BMJ wrote this year about the challenges facing NHS workers much of it makes disturbing reading:

“Behaviours in the workplace—encompassing the behaviours of colleagues, patients, relatives, and the public—are a major concern for the NHS workforce. Some workplace cultures in the NHS are highly adverse, leading to poor experiences of work, mental health difficulties, and consequent negative effects on patient safety and quality, including those that erupt into organisational crises.
Some staff, especially those who are minoritised, are particularly at risk of experiencing poor behaviours and culture, to the extent that the NHS has been described as diverse but not inclusive. Although around a quarter of NHS staff are from ethnic minority backgrounds, they are less likely to progress to senior and leadership roles, for example.Reported rates of bullying and disrespect, harassment, including sexual abuse and worse, and racism and discrimination, are alarmingly high. UK REACH (a research study into ethnicity and covid-19 diagnosis and outcomes in healthcare workers) found that around a fifth (21.2%) of staff surveyed between October and December 2021 reported that they had experienced discrimination in the previous six months, either from patients, colleagues, or both, but only half of those who had experienced harassment, bullying, or abuse said that they or a colleague had reported it. Read more from the BMJ

For those of us like me who are severely immune compromised the NHS has become a hostile place. Mask wearing is often not tolerated in clinical environments despite the fact there are still many vulnerable people being hospitalised with COVID. And getting treatments for Covid to prevent serious complications is a confusing and stressful business with the NHS refusing to role out NICE recommendations despite strong evidence that antivirals taken as soon as a COVID infection starts for anyone who is considered vulnerable will shorten their illness, reduce the risk of long COVID, or worse yet hospitalisation for severe disease. Some countries have made paxlovid available much more broadly than we have and at the moment the goal of the NHS seems to be to reduce access as much as possible when this could massively reduce the impact of the repeated COVID waves of admissions that nobody likes to admit are still happening.

I do hope that the NHS review that has been commissioned will examine honestly some of these major organisation failures and not simply say “more money please”.

Wes Streeting also stressed this week in a talk to the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change that the NHS needs to grasp its responsibility to help get sick people back into work and hence improve the economy:

By cutting waiting lists, we can get Britain back to health and back to work, and by taking bold action on public health we can build the healthy society needed for a healthy economy.
We will make Britain a powerhouse for life sciences and medical technology. If we can combine the care of the NHS and the genius of our country’s leading scientific minds, we can develop modern treatments for patients and help get Britain’s economy booming.

All in all Wes Streeting had a very busy first week, let’s pray for him as his crucial work continues.

Straight to work on fixing the broken NHS and making it fit for the future.
Catch up on @WesStreeting‘s first week as Health and Social Care Secretary � pic.twitter.com/6Ce63g0r09
— Department of Health and Social Care (@DHSCgovuk) July 12, 2024