Wes Streeting resigns as health secretary - his letter in full

Dear Prime Minister,

The results are in and I am pleased to report that I have delivered against the ambitious targets you set for me when I became your Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. Today's figures confirm that we surpassed our waiting times target despite strikes, and that waiting lists fell by 110,000 in March - the biggest monthly drop outside of Covid since 2008 - meaning that we are on track to achieve the fastest improvement in NHS waiting times in history.

The only question that matters in government is whether we leave our successors a better situation than we inherited. Ambulance response times for heart attacks and strokes are now the fastest in five years. A&E waiting times are improving, with four-hour waiting figures also the best in five years. We've recruited 2,000 more GPs and satisfaction has risen from 60 per cent to 74.5 per cent since we came to office. We hit our target of recruiting 8,500 mental health staff three years early. We've achieved this at the same as balancing the books for the first time in nine years and smashing the 2 per cent NHS productivity target by achieving 2.8 per cent, which means the investment we're putting in goes further and that the public can have greater confidence that their money is being well-spent.

None of this would have been achieved without the brilliant leadership team of ministers, officials, and special advisers we have established in the Department of Health and Social Care and the NHS - superbly led by Samantha Jones and Sir Jim Mackey, who has been a knight in shining armour and a brilliant leader of 1.5 million staff upon whom all this success depends.

The National Health Service is the embodiment of all that is best about Britain and our values. Thanks to our Labour government, it is on the road to recovery: lots done, but so much more to do.

These are all good reasons for me to remain in post, but as you know from our conversation earlier this week, having lost confidence in your leadership, I have concluded that it would be dishonourable and unprincipled to do so.

Last week's election results were unprecedented - both in terms of the scale of the defeat and the consequences of that failure. For the first time in our country's history, nationalists are in power in every corner of the United Kingdom - including a dangerous English nationalism represented by Nigel Farage and Reform UK. This represents both an existential threat to the future integrity of the United Kingdom, but Reform UK also represent a threat to the values and ideals that have made this country great. Progressives across our country understand this threat and our responsibility to confront it, but they are increasingly losing faith that the Labour Party is capable of rising to our historic responsibility of defeating racism and offering hope that Britain's best days lie ahead through social democracy.

There is no doubt that the unpopularity of this Government was a major and common factor in our defeats across England, Scotland and Wales. Good Labour people lost through no fault of their own. There are many reasons we could point to: from individual mistakes on policy like the decision to cut the winter fuel allowance to the 'island of strangers' speech, all of which have left the country not knowing who we are or what we really stand for.