PM says NHS must “reform or die” following damning report into state of the service
Prime Minister Keir Starmer has promised to deliver the “biggest reimagining of our NHS since its birth” in response to Ara Darzi’s independent investigation into the state of the health service in England. The report1 by Darzi, a surgeon and former Labour health minister, said the NHS is in a “critical condition,” degraded by years of austerity and “disastrous” structural reforms that were “political choices.” Starmer said the service must “reform or die” to meet the challenges it faces, promising “major surgery, not sticking plaster solutions.” Darzi was commissioned in July by health secretary Wes Streeting to assess all facets of the NHS in England including patient access, quality of care, and overall performance. Publishing his rapid review on 11 September, Darzi said he was “shocked” by what he had found (see box). He said the health service had been chronically weakened over more than a decade by a lack of capital investment, leaving ballooning waiting lists, emergency departme
