Making Britain healthier will help cut the spiralling benefits bill, Health Secretary Wes Streeting argues today.
It comes as the government bid to avoid a huge backlash from MPs by scrapping plans to freeze Personal Independence Payments (PIP).
Ministers are widely expected to publish details of how they intend to slash the welfare budget this week.
But writing exclusively for the Sunday Mirror, Mr Streeting argued cutting waiting lists and targeting areas of worklessness with “crack teams” to improve NHS services would help reduce demand for sickness and disability benefits.
“By doing things differently, we are speeding up patient care, to get sick Brits back to health and back to work,” he wrote.
“For the first time in 14 years, there is real progress for our nation’s health, which is crucial to the health of our economy.”
Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall hinted at the argument writing for the Sunday Mirror last month.
“Too many brilliant Britons I meet across the country are stuck on lengthy NHS waiting lists that ballooned under the Conservatives,” she wrote.
“People who can work, and want to work, are trapped – that’s bad for their living standards and bad for their health.
“It means a spiralling benefits bill that is spending billions on the costs of failure rather than acting as a springboard to success.”
Unless the government changes course dramatically, the bill for sickness and disability benefits will rise from £65bn to £70bn a year by the end of the Parliament in 2030, research has found.
Meanwhile, plans to freeze PIP – a major disability benefit paid to 3.6 million people – have reportedly been dropped to avoid a backlash from Labour MPs.
According to Politico, ministers were considering the plan as part of a plan to cut the benefits bill by up to £6billion.
But the idea prompted a backlash when it was leaked to ITV last week.
Asked about the reports at a press conference yesterday, Keir Starmer said: “I’ve made the principles clear enough. We need to support those who need support, and to protect them.
“But at the same time we need to make sure that we support and protect those who need to – and are able to get into – work, which the current arrangements I don’t think adequately do.”
‘We are speeding up patient care, to get sick Brits back to health and back to work’
By WES STREETING, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
In the 8 months since the general election, this Labour government has begun the work of change.
We negotiated an end to the resident doctors’ strike within three weeks.
Not only did we deliver our manifesto pledge of 2 million extra appointments a year, we hit it 7 months early.
After 14 years of rising waiting lists under the Tories, we have cut waiting lists five months in a row, taking 193,000 off the list.
And by doing things differently, we are speeding up patient care, to get sick Brits back to health and back to work.
Take our crack teams that we’ve sent into areas of high joblessness across the country, where they are cutting waiting lists twice as fast as the rest of the NHS.
Teams of top doctors are running operating theatres like formula one pit stops to cut down on wasted time between operations.
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At the Northern Care Alliance & Manchester Foundation Trust, a series ‘super clinics’ act as one stop models, with Employment Advisors on site to help patients struggling to get back to work.
Those that need surgery are then booked to ‘high flow theatre’ lists – like one in Salford, where 100 Spinal patients were seen in just one weekend.
Warrington & Halton have run Super Clinics for Gynaecology delivered at weekends, with reducing the need for follow up appointments, to get women off waiting lists faster.
At East Lancs Hospitals Trust, our crack teams have cut the waiting list for heart scans from 2700 patients to 700.
For the first time in 14 years, there is real progress for our nation’s health, which is crucial to the health of our economy.
Just this week, York and North Yorkshire was announced as one of our new trailblazer areas bringing together work, health and skills support to the people who most need our help to get back to work.
We are also recruiting an additional 8,500 mental health workers across child and adult services to reduce delays, benefiting up to 100,000 people with support to start, stay in and succeed in work.
A lot done, but much, much more to do.
I am determined to liberate frontline NHS staff from the paperwork and process they are bogged down by, so they can focus on patients.
That’s why we’re getting rid of the biggest quango in the world, NHS England.
These changes will mean a much leaner top of the NHS, savings hundreds of millions of pounds a year.
That money will go to the frontline to our nurses, doctors, paramedics and beyond, to cut waiting times faster and deliver our Plan for Change.
Change is hard. There will always be cautious voices warning you to slow down.
But we inherited an NHS going through the worst crisis in its history. There’s no times to waste.
Only Labour will bring in the radical change needed to fix it.
We will change the status quo – and make sure the NHS can once again be there for you when you need it.
