NHS may be collapsing, Streeting aide warns

Telegraph

06-03-2025

The NHS may be collapsing, Wes Streeting 's chief strategy adviser has warned.
Paul Corrigan, one of the key figures behind the Government's forthcoming 10-year health plan, in a rare public appearance, warned that a 'wave of doom' caused by an ageing and sicker population was about to hit the NHS.
Mr Corrigan, who was a special adviser to Alan Milburn, Sir Tony Blair's health secretary, said since the general election last July, the landmark plan to reform the health service had been his primary work.
'The wave of doom is people like me, I'm 76 and it's quite likely that I'll get a couple of long-term conditions [in the next 10 years] and become much more dependent on the health service,' he told delegates at ukactive's Active Uprising 2025 conference.
'And actually the ageing population, which I refuse to see as a problem or burden, because I am it, is going to grow considerably in the next 10 years.'
Mr Corrigan said the population would get 'sicker' as a result and 'the crucial thing about the 10-year plan is it is built upon the fact that if we carry on doing what we're doing in the same way as we're doing it, the health service will collapse'.
'In fact, it may be collapsing now,' he added.
The plan was announced last September – with Mr Streeting declaring he would fix the 'broken' NHS – and is due to be published in May.
It will set out how the Government will deliver its pledge to make key three shifts: moving more care from hospitals to the community, focusing more on preventing disease than treating it, and digitising the NHS.
Mr Corrigan said the health service would be 'in very big trouble' if the radical changes that are needed had not happened in 10 years' time, and that the 'necessity for change, is my certainty that there will be change'.
He said one of the key aspects of the plan would be to overhaul the 'financial flows' in the health service to better reward GP surgeries and community services for keeping patients out of hospital.
Currently, if a GP keeps patients out of hospital by preventing the onset of a disease, the money for doing so is saved by the hospital having fewer patients, while the GP and community services receive no savings despite having all of the cost, he explained.
The plan will reconfigure that relationship so the savings can be reinvested in more prevention and outline new ways to incentivise and pay local organisations to keep people fit.
Mr Streeting has pledged to divert billions of pounds in funding from hospitals to GPs.
Mr Corrigan said the proposals were 'not revolutionary' and 'in five years' time it will look straightforward, but at the moment it is very different'.
He also apologised for the NHS being a 'really bad partner' with the wider health and care industry, which includes both charity and private sector businesses.
'It needs relationships outside of itself to solve the problems of health and it needs to recognise this,' he said. 'The answer to this is in every locality, rather than here.'
He said it was about 'liberating' local areas to create relationships with partners such as gyms and leisure centres and getting people 'to be active in their health', which is not what the NHS has historically been set up to do.
One of key initiatives expected to be part of the plan is the return of a neighbourhood healthcare model, with GPs, pharmacists, physiotherapists and other local services all working together to proactively protect people's health and treat them in the community.
Asked what role the fitness and leisure community could play, Mr Corrigan said: 'If the neighbourhood healthcare model doesn't embrace neighbourhood health, it will fall over, because of the amount of need.
'In a local area, how a GP-led neighbourhood relates to the voluntary sector and to the broader health sector, will be the only way it will construct a sustainable future,' he added.
Mike Farrar, the chairman of ukactive, said Mr Corrigan was 'very, very influential individual around this' plan.
Mr Farrar, a former NHS boss, said the physical activity industry could be key to the Government's plan to better prevent disease, but also to unlock billions of pounds in the economy.
He listed some 'staggering' statistics including that ' workplace sickness cost the UK £138 billion, for mental health among employees, cost UK employers £51 billion each year, and between 2 and 16 per cent of the annual salary bill by employers is spent on sickness absence. That is a huge amount of this that's in our system that we can do something to sort out'.
'I know that the Government can achieve growth through health – a nation that is more physically active will be more economically active. Any growth plans will need to focus on immediate growth as well as long-term strategy such as plans for airport runways,' he said.
'Social prescribing and building physical activity into care pathways now provide the opportunity for the NHS to address the needs of tens of thousands of people suffering from chronic conditions and to help them avoid costly hospital admissions and loss of independent living.
'This is where the forthcoming 10-year vision for health can really signal a shift in priorities and resources by establishing a new relationship between the NHS and the physical activity sector.
'If we do not address our population's worsening health with true preventative measures, our economy will struggle immensely to be supercharged, the way we all hope.'