Doctors risk turning NHS into a ‘museum for 20th century healthcare’ if they continue to oppose new tech, Streeting warns

Doctors risk turning the NHS into a ‘museum for 20th century healthcare’ if they continue to oppose new technology, Wes Streeting has warned.

The health secretary vowed to ‘stand up for the interests of patients’ and make it as easy to book a medical appointment as it is to order a taxi or takeaway.

But he told the Labour Party conference in Liverpool that the British Medical Assocation is threatening to obstruct the move.

Mr Streeting insisted he will not ‘back down’ in the face of the union’s protests as he also took aim at Nigel Farage.

He said the Reform UK leader wants an NHS that ‘checks your pockets before your pulse and your credit card before your care’.

Mr Streeting, Labour MP for Ilford North, said: ‘Tomorrow, we are reforming general practice, so patients can request appointments online at any point of the day.

‘Many GPs already offer this service, because they’ve changed with the times.

‘Why shouldn’t booking a GP appointment be as easy as booking a delivery, taxi, or takeaway?

‘Our policy comes alongside £1 billion extra funding for general practice, and 2,000 extra GPs.

‘Yet the BMA threaten to oppose it. In 2025.

‘I give you this warning. If we give into the forces of conservatism, they will turn the NHS into a museum for 20th century healthcare.

‘We will always stand up for the interests of patients. I won’t back down.’

The cabinet member said the next ten years ‘won’t just bring a decade’s worth of change in healthcare – it will bring centuries worth’.

‘Medicine is being transformed before our eyes’, he continued. ‘We now have genetic tests that can predict a child’s risk of illness before they ever fall sick.

‘We’re on the brink of vaccines that could one day cure cancer. Weight loss jabs could help us finally defeat obesity.

‘And this isn’t just a medical revolution, it’s an industrial revolution, a technological revolution, one that will shape the next century of jobs, industry and public health.’

From tomorrow, GP surgeries in England will be required to keep online forms open for the duration of their working hours for non-urgent appointment requests, medication queries and admin requests.

The change was announced by the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England in February as part of the new GP contract for 2025/26 in a bid to end the 8am scramble for appointments on the phone.

At the time, officials said the move would be ‘subject to necessary safeguards in place to avoid urgent clinical requests being erroneously submitted online’.

But the BMA says these safeguards have not been put in place and no additional staff have been brought in to manage what it predicts to be a ‘barrage of online requests’.

There are fears the change could lead to ‘hospital-style waiting lists in general practice’ and ‘reduce face-to-face GP appointments’, according to the union.

It said this could risk patient safety as staff try to find the most urgent cases, with fears that reviewing online requests will take up too much time.

But Mr Streeting has hit back, saying there are ‘clear’ safeguards and it is ‘absurd’ that people cannot book appointments online in an era when people lead so much their lives on the internet.

On Sunday, GPs gave Mr Streeting 48 hours to resolve the row or face another formal dispute.

The threat raises the prospect of further industrial action, such as a cap on daily consultations and a refusal to do routine tests on hospitals’ behalf.

Many surgeries already have a system that allows patients to request consultations online, with staff reviewing these and booking appointments accordingly.

But DHSC says there is a lack of consistency, with some surgeries choosing to switch the function off in busier periods.

The BMA’s GP Committee voted last week to enter dispute over the change but this does not formally come into effect until they write to the health secretary – something it says it will do on tomorrow if Mr Streeting fails to take action to avert it.

Addressing delegates in Liverpool, the health secretary said: ‘We are in the fight of our lives.

‘Not just for the NHS, or even for the survival of this government, but for everything we believe in.

‘It is a battle of progressives against reactionaries.

‘Patriotism versus nationalism. Hope not hate.

‘Our country is being confronted with choices about who we are and what we stand for.

‘And nowhere do those choices come together more starkly than our National Health Service.

‘The founding principles of the NHS are now contested for the first time in generations.

‘Farage wants to replace the NHS with an insurance system.

‘His vision for healthcare is a system that checks your pockets before your pulse and your credit card before your care.

‘Well, it might be alright for mister moneybags. We know he can afford it. But what about those who can’t?

‘We should know by now he’s a con artist, posing as the voice of the people while working for the interests of the powerful.

‘And it’s not reform he’s offering, it’s retreat. He says we can’t afford in this century, the National Health Service we could afford in the last.

‘If that’s the fight Farage wants, bring it on. Today, I’m here not simply to defend a service, but to uphold our values.

‘A publicly funded, public service, free at the point of use. Back on its feet and fit for the future.

‘Those are Labour’s values, they are Britain’s values and this is a fight we will win.

‘But we must win another fight, too — one against the poison of post-truth politics.’

Ahead of his speech, Mr Streeting told the BMA there ‘isn’t a more pro-NHS, more pro-doctor health secretary or government waiting in the wings’ and continuing to strike and oppose change risk placing Farage government.

He added: ‘Work with a Labour government that wants to work with you.’

Mr Streeting told Times Radio: ‘I think the BMA has been guilty on a number of disputes of speaking for activists rather than being representative of their members.’