Sir Tony Blair has warned the NHS will “continue down a path of decline” without radical reforms, including a greater role for the private sector.
The former prime minister called for “brave political leadership” to protect the future of the health service.
Marking its 75th anniversary, Sir Tony said there is no future for the NHS without “fully embracing the tech revolution”.
And he called for the service to make much more use of private healthcare providers to cut waiting times. Sir Tony’s suggestions included that patients should be allowed to pay to speed up access to healthcare.
His intervention comes the day after former health secretary Sajid Javid, who has suggested patients should be charged to see a GP, called for a royal commission into the model of the NHS. He said the NHS was “frozen in time” and an inquiry was needed to compare it with models used in comparable countries.
And the ex-Labour leader, in a report by his Tony Blair Institute think tank, said: “The NHS now requires fundamental reform or, eventually, support for it will diminish. As in the 1990s, the NHS must either change or decline.”
He said that despite “pockets of excellence”, the NHS is falling behind the healthcare systems in other countries, as many services remain “slow and unresponsive to digital transformation”.
Embracing the private sector would open the NHS to providers where the “incentives of funding and accountability are designed to encourage innovation”, he added.
Sir Tony said the NHS App has opened the door to partnership with the private sector in “ways that were not possible before”, creating “opportunities for greater choice and competition”.
In the foreword to his report, which suggests reforms to make the NHS fit for the future, Sir Tony backs expanding the role of the private sector on six occasions.
Sir Tony said: “Change is never easy and requires brave political leadership. If we do not act, the NHS will continue down a path of decline, to the detriment of our people and our economy.”
Labour’s Wes Streeting said he “does not agree” with Sir Tony’s suggestion that some people should be able to pay to use NHS services.
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