Write to Yvette Cooper: Help Build the NHS We Need

Yvette Cooper has just been appointed Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. Every new Health Secretary faces the same temptation: to adopt quick fixes that look good in a headline but cost the NHS for years afterwards.

We want her to hear from the people who actually use and work in the NHS, not just the lobbyists offering easy answers that invariably kick the problem down the road, or simply push it into another part of the system.

Add your details below and we'll send her a letter from you, asking her to resist private sector shortcuts, think in joined-up terms rather than firefighting one crisis at a time, and properly resource the NHS rather than quietly shifting pressure onto GP services.

It takes 30 seconds and every letter she receives adds to the pressure to get this right from day one.

Thank you for your support.

The EveryDoctor Team

***An Update - The Department of Health has withdrawn its public email address and replaced it with a contact form. We will find a way! Your letters are coming to us. We will print them off and we will post them to the Minister. We will not be thwarted.***

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Dear Secretary of State,Congratulations on your appointment as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. It is one of the toughest jobs in the Government, and you are taking it on at a moment when the NHS needs steady, serious leadership more than ever. I know your diary will fill up fast, so I will keep this brief and to the point.I am writing as a supporter of EveryDoctor, an organisation led by doctors, powered by NHS staff and patients, campaigning for a publicly funded and publicly run National Health Service. We are not a doctors' club. We exist because clinicians, NHS staff and patients all want the same thing: an NHS that works, and we believe government policy, not the people delivering care, is what most often stands in the way of that.As you settle into the role, I want to ask you to resist a temptation that has caught out many of your predecessors: reaching for the private sector as a quick fix. Outsourcing and PFI-style deals may look like relief in year one, but they saddle the NHS with costs that outlast the political cycle that created them. Short-term expedience becomes generational debt. There is also a pattern worth naming plainly: private providers tend to take on the simpler, more profitable cases, while the NHS is left to manage the complex and costly ones, and when a private case goes wrong, it is the NHS that picks it up, often via a blue-light transfer to A&E. That is not a partnership, it is risk transfer. A private provider's first loyalty is to its shareholders, not to the system as a whole, and policy should reflect that reality rather than wish it away.I would also ask you to think in joined-up terms rather than department by department. Too often, fixing one visible problem simply pushes it somewhere less visible. Reducing ambulance waiting times only helps patients if there is capacity to receive them, otherwise the same pressure resurfaces as corridor care in A&E. One area where I would urge real caution is any move to shift more work into primary care to relieve pressure on hospitals. GP services are already stretched, and pushing work downstream without the funding, staffing and infrastructure to match is not a solution, it is a delay that stores up a bigger problem for later. Chasing whichever part of the system is under most scrutiny this month does not fix anything. It just moves the pressure to a part that gets less attention, until it breaks too.None of this is a lost cause. It is not too late to save the NHS, but it will take a government willing to plan for the whole system rather than the next headline. I would welcome the chance to see your department take that approach, and I believe you will find NHS staff, doctors and patients ready to work with you if you do.Congratulations again on the appointment. I wish you well in it, and I will be watching for what comes next with real hope.

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