New health secretary Wes Streeting has said that the NHS will be an “economic growth department” as the government attempts to address the alarming rise in long-term sickness.
“One of the things I’ve said to my department and to the NHS is to be willing to rethink our role in government and in our country at large,” he said at the Tony Blair Institute’s (TBI) Future of Britain Conference.
“This is no longer simply a project services department,” he said. “This is an economic growth department. And the health of the nation and the health of the economy are inextricably linked.”
The comments come as the UK grapples with a rising tide of long-term sickness which has forced more and more people out of the workforce. The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed that a record 2.8m people are out of work with long-term health conditions.
This has put into reverse the trend of rising employment during the 2010s, which was an important contributor to economic growth.
“We’re going to be a government that recognises that as we get people not just back to health, but back to work, that will make a big contribution to the growth”.
Wes Streting
New research released today by the TBI suggested that reducing the incidence of six major diseases which prevent people from working could raise GDP by around 0.74 per cent within five years, amounting to an annual boost of £19.8bn.
Andrew Scott, co-author of the research, told conference attendees that he “cannot see a bigger macroeconomic free lunch” than tackling preventative illnesses.
Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Wes Streeting, Picture by Lauren Hurley / No 10
But Scott suggested the government’s fiscal rules might be constraining scope for action. “Prevention is an investment…You’ve got to have fiscal rules that give you scope to do this investment,” he said.
Nevertheless, Streeting promised that he would focus on prevention. Under his watch, he said the health service would see the “centre of gravity out of hospital, into the community…It’s about a shift from the services focused on treating sickness to a government focused on preventing illness in the first place”.
Streeting also suggested that the health service, with its single-payer model could work more closely together with the “sharpest and brightest minds” in the life sciences sector to fuel growth.
“We can be a powerhouse for the life sciences and med tech revolution here in this country and in the world. That is an economic growth mission,” he said.
The new Labour government has placed economic growth at the heart of its policy agenda. Chancellor Rachel Reeves said growth will be a “national mission”.