Portsmouth North MP Amanda Martin has praised Labour’s newly unveiled 10 Year Health Plan, calling it a transformative blueprint that will revolutionise healthcare delivery across the nation.
The comprehensive strategy promises to reshape the NHS through three fundamental transitions: moving care from hospitals into communities, modernising from paper-based systems to digital platforms, and prioritising prevention over treatment of illness. These changes aim to benefit Portsmouth residents alongside communities nationwide by reducing waiting times, improving care accessibility, and addressing health disparities.
A key component involves establishing Neighbourhood Health Services featuring integrated teams within local communities to enhance NHS accessibility. This community-focused approach is designed to relieve pressure on overwhelmed hospitals, allowing them to concentrate on delivering specialised, advanced, and personalised medical care.
The Government inherited an outdated NHS dependent on paper records and fax machines, disconnected from contemporary technology. The new strategy will modernise the service, ensuring healthcare staff can utilise technological advances and improved efficiency tools.
Under Labour’s Plan for Change, the emphasis shifts from treating illness to preventing it, establishing a more proactive approach that collaborates with partners to make healthy choices more accessible whilst transitioning the NHS from a treatment-focused service to a prevention-centred one.
The plan outlines how the Labour Government will harness opportunities from emerging technology, pharmaceuticals, and innovation to provide superior care for all patients regardless of location or income, whilst delivering better value for taxpayers.
It will address persistent health inequalities affecting the country, ensuring working-class communities receive equal priority in healthcare provision. Recent months have seen the NHS push trusts and integrated care boards to eliminate wasteful expenditure and address projected shortfalls.
By eliminating deficit culture, approximately £2.2 billion previously allocated for deficit support will be redirected towards essential resources including staff, medications, new technology, and equipment where most needed. This will benefit millions in historically underserved areas including rural communities, coastal towns, and working-class neighbourhoods.
Labour has already begun implementing measures to reduce waiting lists and strengthen NHS foundations. Nationally, waiting lists have reached their lowest point in two years, including the first April decrease in 17 years, with an additional 4.2 million appointments delivered since July—exceeding the government’s target by more than double.
Amanda Martin, Labour MP for Portsmouth North, commented: “Following participation in the most extensive national NHS discussion in its history, I’m confident Portsmouth residents will welcome Labour’s Ten Year Health Plan, which represents one of the most significant healthcare transformations in the service’s history.
“Through this Government’s implementation of three major NHS operational shifts—from hospital to community, from analogue to digital, from sickness to prevention—we will become the generation that restores the NHS and prepares it for the future.”
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Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting stated: “Our 10 Year Health Plan will revolutionise the NHS, implementing one of the most significant healthcare delivery changes in history.
“By transitioning from hospital to community care, we will ultimately reduce hospital waiting lists and prevent patients from navigating between multiple services for treatment.
“This Government’s Plan for Change is establishing an NHS genuinely prepared for the future, maintaining patient health and reducing hospital admissions, with care provided closer to home and within the home.”
