Thank you for contacting me to raise concerns about NHS privatisation. I absolutely understand your concern about our NHS and share your view that we need to take bold and urgent action.

The NHS is our greatest institution, established 75 years ago to provide universal healthcare free at the point of use. I am committed to upholding its founding principles as a comprehensive, integrated, and public NHS that is there for all of us when we need it.

I know that many people are understandably concerned at the very serious pressures facing our NHS. Despite the heroic efforts of staff, our health service is struggling and performance against many waiting time measures is at a record low: patients are waiting hours for ambulances to arrive, A&E departments are overstretched, and more than seven million people are waiting for treatment.

Ministers will try and point to the impact of COVID-19. But we entered the pandemic with record NHS waiting lists and 100,000 staff vacancies. Staff shortages are reaching dangerously high levels, when the need for NHS treatment is incredibly high. We need far more than a sticking plaster on the gaping wounds of over a decade of neglect.

We must urgently build capacity in the NHS so that all patients who need it can be treated on time again. But I believe we have a responsibility in the short term to utilise spare capacity in the private sector to get through the current crisis and bring down NHS waiting lists. Nobody should be left languishing in serious pain, while those who can afford to, pay to go private. That is the two-tier healthcare system that I and my colleagues want to end.

In the long term, I want the NHS to be so good that people never have to go private. There is, in my view, an incompatibility between the aims of private companies and the aims of the NHS. A company’s primary concern is its shareholders, not the patients.

Building an NHS fit for the future is one of mine and Labour’s five key missions for government, reforming health and care services to speed up treatment, shift the focus of healthcare out of the hospital and into the community, and reduce health inequalities.

Paid for by ending the non-dom tax status regime, the plan will double the number of medical school places, create 10,000 extra nursing and midwifery clinical placements a year, train double the number of district nurses each year, and deliver 5,000 more health visitors.

At the same time I believe we must focus efforts on retaining current staff, valuing the workforce through fair pay and conditions, enhancing mental health services so all staff can access tailored support, and ending the absurdity of pension rules that force many doctors to retire early.

Putting patient safety and safe staffing levels at the heart of workforce planning is vital for the future of our health service. So to ensure the NHS has the staff it needs, I also support the creation of a new arm’s-length body tasked with producing full and transparent workforce projections, as well as creating new career paths into the NHS.

We must recruit, retain and train the staff our health service needs to bring down record waiting lists and deliver safe, high-quality services. This is not just a moral imperative; it is crucial for the future functioning of our NHS.

Nye Bevan – who spearheaded the creation of the NHS – said in 1948 that “this service must always be changing, growing and improving”. This 10-year plan of investment and reform seeks to do just that; dealing with the root causes of the challenges faced by our health service and building an NHS and social care system fit for the future.