A Turning Point for the NHS: Renewal in Action
This year, NHS waiting lists have finally gone down.
On the surface, that might not sound like a big deal. But it is. Monumentally so.
Because it’s the first time in 15 years that they’ve fallen.
Before the General Election last summer, Britain was buckling under the weight of a broken system.
Our rivers and beaches were choked with sewage. Four hundred hotels had been commandeered to house asylum seekers, bogged down by glacial processing times. Prisons teetered at breaking point, with the prospect of no prison places to hold criminals convicted of serious crimes.
Yet for many of my constituents, the deepest scar on our public realm was the NHS. Over 7.5 million people languished on waiting lists when this government took office which meant lives were on hold, futures in limbo.
Labour pledged to deliver two million extra appointments in our first year to chip away at the backlog.
We didn’t just meet that promise; we smashed it, carrying out five million.
None of this was easy. Last year’s Budget demanded tough choices, not least the rise in employer National Insurance Contributions. I won’t brush aside the very real concerns I’ve heard from businesses in my patch about the added pressure this brings. Their voices matter.
But tough choices were essential. The alternative was limping on with an NHS starved of time and resources, was no choice at all.
Millions trapped in pain, side-lined from work, hemmed in by their daily lives: that wasn’t sustainable. It wasn’t humane. It certainly wasn’t the Britain we deserve.
And the gains aren’t just national headlines, they’re transforming lives right here in Banbury.
We’ve welcomed more doctors into our constituency since the election, breathing fresh capacity into local care. GP surgeries like Hook Norton Surgery have secured vital funding to expand their premises and treat more patients, easing the squeeze at the front door of our health service.
Then there’s Horton Hospital, the place where I was born, and where so many of our stories begin.
The downgrading of its maternity unit wasn’t just a cut; it was a heart-breaking symbol of local services in free-fall. That’s why I’m thrilled that the government has injected £3.3 million into our hospital, with £110,000 ringfenced directly for the maternity unit. A lifeline for new life.
But money alone isn’t the answer.
For too long, the heart-wrenching concerns of expectant mothers and their babies, ignored and dismissed by the old regime, festered unchecked.
Our government is now confronting them head-on, particularly at the John Radcliffe Hospital by including it in a sweeping national review of maternity care to ensure safety, dignity, and trust for all.
And we’re streamlining the system itself: NHS England is being scrapped, freeing up £1 billion a year from bureaucratic bloat to pour straight into frontline care where it belongs, with patients, not paperwork.
Politics, at its core, is about choices. And not everyone is easy or universally cheered. This government may not have nailed every decision, and popularity isn’t our lodestar.
But our choices are deliberate: renewal over managed decline. Nowhere is that clearer than in the NHS.
I’m proud of what we’ve begun. And prouder still of the brighter, healthier future we’re building one appointment, one investment, one renewed promise at a time.
Sean.