Rishi Sunak holds emergency talks with NHS leaders over winter crisis | NHS

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Rishi Sunak will hold emergency talks with NHS and care leaders in a bid to tackle Britain’s winter healthcare crisis.

The UK Prime Minister will host the NHS Recovery Forum at Number 10 on Saturday. The talks will focus on four main issues: social care, delayed release, urgent and emergency care, elective care and primary care.

A Downing Street spokesperson said the aim was “to help share knowledge and practical solutions so we can tackle the most critical challenges such as delayed discharge and emergency care”.

But Sunak has been warned that the rare weekend meeting is unlikely to reverse the fortunes of the NHS.

Labor said patients deserved more than a “talking shop” and the Liberal Democrats said it was “too little, too late”.

Senior doctors say the NHS is on a knife edge, with many A&E units struggling to keep up with demand and trust and ambulance services announcing serious incidents.

Discharge rates fell to a new low in England last week, with only a third of those patients being discharged from hospital.

The meeting also comes amid an ongoing strike by nursing and paramedic workers over wages and conditions.

Health unions have been invited to meet the health minister, Steve Barclay, on Monday to discuss the April 2023-24 payroll, but unions say they will not prevent further strike action planned for January.

The forum is expected to last most of Saturday and will be attended by Barclay, Chancellor of the Exchequer John Glenn, Cabinet Office Secretary Oliver Dowden and Chief Executive Officer of NHS England Amanda Pritchard.

Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said there were no “magic bullets” to solve the crisis in hospitals and other care centres.

“It’s been a decade or more in the making, and we’re now paying the heavy price of years of inaction and managing backtracking,” he said. Patients are experiencing delays not seen in years.

“High levels of influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and high levels of Covid are exacerbating the problem but the cause is decades of underinvestment in staffing and capital and the lack of a long-term solution to the capacity crisis facing social care.”

In addition to ministers, attendees will include chief executives and clinical leaders from NHS organisations, regions and local councils from across the country.

A Downing Street spokesperson said: “As the Prime Minister made clear this week, easing immediate pressures while also focusing on the long-term improvement of the NHS system is one of his key promises.

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That’s why we’re bringing together the best minds from the health and care sectors to help share knowledge and practical solutions so we can tackle the most critical challenges like delayed discharge and emergency care.

“We want to correct the unjustified disparity in NHS performance between local areas, because no matter where you live, you should be able to access quality healthcare.”

Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting described the meeting as a “discussion shop”. He said: “After 13 years of NHS mismanagement, this is the equivalent of arsonists holding a forum with the fire brigade to put out the hell they started. Patients deserve more than a modern shop.

“Medical leaders and health experts have been sounding the alarm for months about the crisis the NHS is facing, so why has it taken so long for Rishi Sunak and Steve Barclay to decide to listen to them?”

Streeting said the £500m for late redundancies promised by the government “has not yet reached the frontline and it is now too late to make a difference this winter”.

Lib Dems deputy leader Daisy Cooper said the meeting had been “too little, too late”.

“Hundreds of people die needlessly every week in the worst crisis the NHS has ever seen in this country, while the prime minister sat on his hands,” she said.

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