Wes Streeting: The new health secretary tasked with overseeing NHS policy
From a family acquainted with the Kray twins to one of the Labour Party's most vocal frontbenchers - Ilford North MP Wes Streeting is tasked with overseeing NHS policy.
Friday 5 July 2024 16:53, UK
Wes Streeting has been appointed health secretary in the new Labour government.
The Ilford North MP will oversee the NHS - picking up a health service struggling with a number of issues, including, perhaps most importantly for voters, waiting times.
Wes Streeting was another Labour candidate who felt the pressure of pro-Palestinine independents.
The shadow health secretary saw his majority plummet from more than 9,000 to 528 in Ilford North.
He won 33.4% of the vote, while independent candidate Leanne Mohamad took 32.2%.
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Krays, Cambridge and councillor
Mr Streeting was born and raised in east London in a large family.
He has spoken at length about his upbringing and how it influenced his political views.
His maternal grandparents both spent time in prison, with his mother's father being familiar with notorious gangsters Reggie and Ronnie Kray.
And his grandmother on that side of the family was released from Holloway Prison to give birth to his mother.
While incarcerated, Mr Streeting's grandmother became friends with Christine Keeler - a key figure in the Profumo affair.
The candidate has described this side of the family as "left-wing", and spoken about how he discussed politics with his "really well-read and well-informed" granddad.
But Mr Streeting says he was "closest" to his paternal grandfather, an ex-Navy sailor and civil engineer, who was more of a "working-class Tory" like his own dad.
The Labour frontbencher said seeing Conservative politicians when he was growing up "denigrating single-parent families like mine" was something he took personally.
Mr Streeting was raised by both his parents, although they were separated.
After strong results in his A-Levels, Ms Streeting went to study history at Cambridge University.
He became heavily involved in student politics and eventually became the president of the National Union of Students in 2008, at the age of 25.
He also worked for a Labour-affiliated think tank, and in 2010 was elected as a Labour councillor in Redbridge in east London.
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Becoming an MP
After five years in local politics, Wes Streeting was elected to the House of Commons in 2015, overturning a Conservative majority of 5,404 to win the seat of Ilford North in the area where he was a councillor.
Mr Streeting was not a supporter of the party's new leader Jeremy Corbyn, and during the subsequent years criticised him on issues including the handling of antisemitism in the party.
Politically, Mr Streeting has been described as being on the Blairite side of Labour, although he does not like the label.
As a backbencher, he served on the Treasury Select Committee.
He campaigned for the UK to stay in the EU in 2016, and was re-elected to the Commons with an increased majority in 2017.
Moving to the frontbench
After Labour lost the 2019 general election, Mr Corbyn resigned and was replaced by Sir Keir Starmer as leader of the party.
While Mr Streeting did not support Sir Keir to be leader, he was asked to join the party's frontbench as shadow exchequer secretary to the Treasury in April 2020 after the new leader of the opposition took over.
By the end of the year, he was made shadow schools minister, and was elevated to the shadow cabinet in May 2021 to be shadow secretary of state for child poverty - a role created for him and since abolished.
Mr Streeting was known for being a strong communicator, and regularly made media appearances to advocate for his party's position.
In November 2021 he was moved to be shadow health secretary and has warned the NHS must "modernise or die" - and that the private sector should be utilised to help tackle backlogs.
He also criticised the way he was "mucked around" by the NHS when he was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 2022 - he has since been treated and recovered - although he praised the individual staff who treated him.
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The party has pledged to provide two million more operations, scans, and appointments a year on evenings and weekends with £1.1bn paid in overtime.
It also wants to double the number of NHS scanners, and deliver 700,000 urgent dentistry appointments.
Mr Streeting has said he will get waiting times down - saying the party would deliver "40,000 more appointments every week, extra evening and weekend clinics" to achieve the aim.