Health Secretary Wes Streeting says NHS waiting list is tumbling

Transcript

00:00Well firstly we've got to arrest the decline we've seen under the

00:04Conservatives that have led the NHS the worst crisis in its history and I think

00:07tomorrow's budget will mark the turning point where we can start cutting NHS

00:14waiting lists, deliver the reforms that are needed to not just get our NHS back

00:19on its feet but make it fit for the future. So today we are announcing our

00:24delivery of our manifesto commitments that we said we would deliver the 40,000

00:29more appointments every week to cut NHS waiting lists and not just more

00:32appointments but reformed ways of working. That work has already started

00:36we've been on it since we were elected back in July, we've got crack teams of

00:41top clinicians going into hospitals from this week to help those with the highest

00:45waiting lists and the highest levels of people off work, off sick to cut those

00:48waiting lists and what the Chancellor will set out more broadly in terms of

00:52capital investment in the NHS will enable us to start delivering our

00:56manifesto commitment of doubling the number of CT and MRI scanners over the

01:00course of the Parliament so we can finally start seeing waiting lists

01:03tumble rather than increase in the way that we've seen under the Conservatives.

01:07It won't arrest the decline says you, says the Chancellor, what will it do?

01:11I've just said it, no I've said you said it will arrest the decline in the NHS and

01:15start turning the ship around. The Chancellor said it won't then, if you haven't, the

01:19Chancellor said it won't. I was sat next to her, absolutely I think there's a mismatch

01:22between some of the headlines in today's newspapers and what we actually said

01:25which I know is a shocking turn of events, that never happens in Fleet Street.

01:28So it will arrest the decline? It will arrest the decline and start the process of

01:33turning it around and people are realistic, they know that a single budget

01:37and this is what we did say to journalists on our visit yesterday, a

01:40single budget isn't going to fix all of the problems in the NHS. These have been

01:4414 years in the making but we can grip and stop the decline and start turning

01:49the ship around and people can judge us on our results at the end of this