The Lead Untangles: Labour's 10-year health plan
Will Keir Starmer's plan ape the transformative rollout of 2000 - or ape the Five Year Forward View of 2014?
The Lead Untangles will be delivered via email each Friday by The Lead and focuses on a different complex, divisive issue with each edition. The entirety of The Lead Untangles will always be free for all subscribers.
At a glance facts
The government has officially set out its 10-year Health Plan for the NHS.
Speaking at a health centre in Stratford, east London, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said: “We’re putting in the resources, we’re putting in the priorities and we’ve got the resolve to see this through.
“In the end, I genuinely think it is only Labour governments that can do this.
“I want in 10, 20, 30 years for people to look back and say this was the government that seized the moment and reformed the NHS so it’s fit for the future.”
But what is actually changing, and what has been missed?
Context
Last autumn, after a report by Lord Darzi concluded the NHS was in critical condition due to “serious trouble" with declining productivity, "ballooning" waits and "awful" emergency services, Prime Minister Keir Starmer vowed that the health service would receive no more funding without reform.
Government statistics, published in May, found that the waiting lists for hospital treatment were at 7.4 million in March 2025 while the number of patients waiting over 12 hours for admission after a decision to admit had increased substantially since the middle of 2021 – and ambulances are still failing to meet targets for response times. Lord Darzi’s report also found that staff were demoralised and demotivated and that outcomes on major killers like cancer lagged behind other countries.
The Prime Minister promised the 10-year plan would be ground-breaking, and set out three key areas for reform: the transition to a digital NHS, moving more care from hospitals to communities, and focusing efforts on prevention over sickness.
What is the 10 Year Health Plan?
The 10 year plan, which is backed by an extra £29bn investment to fund the reforms, better services and new technology, announced yesterday proposes to “reinvent” the health service via three major shifts: hospital to community, analogue to digital, sickness to prevention.
On top of that, the Government plans to completely overhaul the operating model of the NHS, steering away from Whitehall and towards devolution. But what does this actually look like?
Hospital to Community
As part of a move towards prevention, the government plans to launch a Neighbourhood Health Service, which would see the opening of local, neighbourhood health centres where patients can receive care 12 hours a day, six days a week.
These centres would combine NHS, local authority and voluntary sector services all in one place, and offer diagnostics, post-operative care and mental health support - as well as debt advice and employment support. They will be run by neighbourhood teams made up of nurses, doctors, social care workers, pharmacists, health visitors, palliative care staff, and paramedics.
The plan is to open an NHC in every community, beginning with places where healthy life expectancy is lowest.
Analogue to Digital
Another key pillar of the plan is the rollout of a new NHS app which would allow people to book appointments, message professionals, see who their care team are, get advice and self-refer for tests. The app would allow patients search for health service providers using data such as waiting times, patient ratings and clinical outcomes. From 2028, the government plans to introduce an AI doctor, which would (in theory) be able to give people health advice.
The app will have different sections of different aspects of healthcare, such as children, care, medicine and specialist help. The app would free up physical access for those with the most complex needs.
Sickness to Prevention
In order to take pressure off the NHS, the government plans to boost prevention measures via policies such as banning tobacco forever for those currently under-16, restricting junk food adverts and introducing mandatory health food sales reporting for all large food sector companies. They will also introduce new standards for alcohol labelling and expand mental health support teams in schools and colleges.
Overhaul of operations and quality of care
To save on costs and deconcentrate power from the central government, Labour will combine NHS England with the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), reducing central headcount by 50 per cent and make Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) the strategic commissioners of local healthcare services.
In terms of staff, the government has promised a higher quality of training, including for “thousands more” GPs. It also says that newly qualified dentists will need to work in the NHS for at least three years, hopefully putting an end to the current crisis in dentistry.
It also promises to develop a new quality strategy for the NHS, with easy-to-understand league tables, to be published from this summer, that rank providers against key quality indicators.
While the plan has been welcomed, it has also been criticised for short-sightedness on staff shortages and a lack of focus on the adult social care sector.
What are people saying?
Professor Nicola Ranger, The Royal College of Nursing General Secretary and Chief Executive, said: “A neighbourhood health service is a bold vision and it needs nursing staff in the driving seat. The Prime Minister must back up his plan with a clear one to turn around the shortage of nurses in all local communities.
“Moving care away from overcrowded hospitals is urgent and necessary but it will prove impossible whilst this part of the healthcare workforce is so depleted and undervalued. Crucial teams of district nursing and health visiting staff, who keep patients well and safe at home, have fallen by thousands in the last decade or more.”
Harry Quilter-Pinner, executive director at IPPR, said: “This Government inherited an NHS on its knees, and there are no quick fixes for the deep-rooted challenges it faces. But by shifting the centre of gravity from hospitals to neighbourhoods, strengthening local services, and modernising the NHS’s digital backbone, ministers have begun to chart a path to long-term renewal.
“The real test now is delivery. That means sustained investment, tough choices on priorities, and meaningful accountability. The plan is welcome – but it must be the start of a decade of determined action.”
Rachel Rowney, Local Trust Chief Executive, said: "The ten year health plan published today sets itself the vast and necessary task of reintegrating healthcare into the social fabric of places. This can only be down hand in hand with communities at the hyperlocal level and from the initial details set out it seems these plans falls short of centering the role of communities in the prevention and the reduction of health inequalities.”
BMA council chair Dr Tom Dolphin said: “Ultimately patients want to be seen quickly, close to home and by the right person, so we will need to look carefully at the details of what’s being proposed in the Plan itself and whether it will meet the Government’s ambitions.
“The success of the Plan, and whether it will improve patients’ care and the public’s lives, will hinge on whether it genuinely addresses the workforce shortages, and values and empowers professionals on the front line, or just rearranges deck chairs on a sinking ship.
Karolina Gerlich, CEO of the Care Workers’ Charity states: “Today’s announcement continues a worrying trend: adult social care is chronically ignored in national reform plans. Shifting more care into the community without resourcing adult social care is not transformation; it’s a transfer of pressure onto a workforce already stretched to breaking point.
“Care workers are increasingly expected to take on delegated health tasks – complex, clinical responsibilities that were once the remit of nurses – without the training, pay, or professional recognition they deserve. These tasks are growing, yet the sector remains underfunded, undervalued, and underrepresented in policy decisions.
“If we are serious about delivering on this plan, we must invest in the people who are delivering care day in, day out. The Government must stop perceiving social care as just an enabler to the NHS.”
In case you missed it, we rate the government’s performance when it comes to the NHS and health in our first part of our Westminster Editor Zoë Grünewald’s verdict on Labour’s first year in power.
A year of Labour in power - the report card, part I
Once Keir Starmer had dusted the remnants of the confetti bomb from his grey suit and measured up the Downing Street curtains, the brand new Labour government got to work.
What happens next?
The government has put forward its plan, now it has to deliver.
As Sarah Woolnough, the chief executive of the King’s Fund said: “The radical change would be delivering the vision. History has shown us that you can’t simply co-locate different health professionals in a building and expect a neighbourhood health service to flourish.”
In 2000, Tony Blair and health secretary Alan Milburn unveiled an NHS plan, in response to a 1999-2000 winter crisis, that would be widely credited with kickstarting the rebuilding of the NHS and lead to patients getting access to care as quickly as anyone could remember.
Keir Starmer will be hoping his plan is as effective as that rather than 2014’s Five Year Forward View or 2019’s NHS long-term plan, which showed headline-grabbing changes do not always result in changes that patients feel.
Tell us your views on the 10-year health plan by taking our quick reader survey.
About The Lead Untangles: In an era where misinformation is actively and deliberately used by elected politicians and where advocates and opposers of beliefs state their point of view as fact, sometimes the most useful tool reporters have is to help readers make sense of the world.
The Lead Untangles is delivered each Friday by The Lead and focuses on a different complex, divisive issue with each edition. Is there something you’d like us to untangle, email ed@thelead.uk
About the author: Ella is a freelance journalist specialising in worker's rights, housing, youth culture, social affairs and lifestyle. You can find her work in Tribune Magazine, Huck Magazine, Novara Media, VICE, Dazed, metro.co.uk and - most importantly - here at The Lead.
This is a bold move but only if the funding needed is planned to come from investment (GDP-raising) spending, not austerity to justify large-scale privatisation. Starmer‘s record and Streeting’s comments give little cause for confidence.