A health minister has said NHS staff are working "under terrible circumstances with really poor equipment", as Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer prepares to set out his plan to to reform the health service. Karin Smyth adds, "doctors, nurses and their leaders all know something big has to happen". Report by Brooksl. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00The waiting lists that people are languishing on that we inherited when we came into office
00:04are a key part of what we want to get rid of in our term in office. So today the Prime
00:09Minister will be announcing the delivery plan for that, many more appointments in the system
00:15but also making sure that patients have got more power in the system to book their own
00:19appointments, to choose something that's much more convenient to them. So more capacity
00:24and more power for patients to make sure we get those waiting lists down to 18 weeks,
00:28over 90% of people waiting for only 18 weeks as opposed to the 18 months they're currently
00:33waiting. So we have committed in our manifesto to more appointments and making sure that
00:40we reduce those waiting lists. What we're announcing today is how we're going to do
00:43that, the delivery of doing that, because people sometimes are sceptical about whether
00:47we can, so we're setting out very clear ambitious targets, more appointments in the system but
00:53also telling people and making sure that the app particularly works better for people so
00:58that people can book their own appointments at more convenient locations but also more
01:03of these surgical hubs, more community diagnostic centres, based sometimes in fact shopping
01:08centres that are local to you. So it's about how we deliver that and our firm promise to
01:13people that they will wait no more than 18 weeks by the end of this Parliament, so very
01:19much on the delivery of our promise. I think most of the professional groups, the doctors
01:23and nurses and their leaders all know that something big has to happen, there has to
01:28be some big changes, that the system isn't working at the moment. Lord Darsey's report
01:33made that very clear, they're working under terrible circumstances with really poor equipment
01:38and ability to support people, so most leaders have welcomed that. They are worried about
01:43how it actually happens, they know they're under current pressure, particularly in winter,
01:47but we are setting out, with NHS England, working closely with local systems about how
01:53we deliver that in each particular region. Currently staff aren't working very efficiently,
01:58we want to make them work more efficiently, we want to incentivise people to work in some
02:02of these new centres, it's a more flexible way of working, that suits different people,
02:06so there'll be different solutions in different parts of the country. So staff are working
02:10really hard, but in Lord Darsey's report he made clear they're doing lots of workarounds
02:14to make things better, so for example I've seen really skilled nurses doing really skilled
02:19care, then spending half an hour trying to print out a letter to give to a patient to
02:23take away with them. Nurses shouldn't be doing that in clinics, in outpatients, they should
02:29perhaps not need a letter, that could be sent to someone on their phone. Most people do
02:34use the phone, use their apps for all sorts of things, so that's inefficiency of the staff
02:40because of the system they're working in, and it's totally demoralising for them and
02:44it's bad for patients and we need to get rid of it.