LABOUR leader Sir Keir Starmer set out the party’s vague mission to create an NHS “fit for the future” today, but failed to commit to more funding for the service.

In his speech in Braintree, Essex, Sir Keir revealed new targets for ambulance response times, cancer diagnosis and cutting deaths from cardiovascular disease.

He said: “We will fix the NHS. We will reform the NHS. Old values, new opportunities.

“An NHS, not just off its knees, but running confidently towards the future.”

Sir Keir proposed a shift towards more community-based mental healthcare to reduce the burden on hospitals, with a pledge to recruit 8,500 new staff and ensure treatment is available in less than a month.

But he refused to say whether Labour would back its commitments by investing more in the NHS than the current government, insisting that funding was “important” but that “it’s not all about money.”

He also did not give details on how he would approach the long-running pay dispute between NHS staff and the government, or comment on his previous pledge against privatisation.

Sir Keir acknowledged that fair remuneration would be crucial to any successful NHS reform, but said his focus will be on harnessing the power of science and new technology, which he described as “gamechangers” to improve the health service, such as by using the NHS app to host digital patient records.

Health Emergency campaign’s John Lister criticised the repeated talk on community support services, which he said had been taking place for the last 30 years without any real investment.

He told the Star: “Again and again, it has been said that all these services are going to be taken into community support.  

“Without any investment in appropriate staffing — such as in district nursing, where numbers are far too small, and community mental health, where there is a short supply — to keep talking about this without monetary investment is just wishful thinking and it’s not going to happen.

“Up and down the country NHS bosses are looking to fill the gaps in community services in order to discharge patients from hospital.”

Mr Lister said that Sir Keir’s plans lack credibility and highlighted a massive gap in funding.

“If Labour doesn’t come up with a well-thought-through plan on the scale of funding needed and how they are going to address it, people are not going to take their promises seriously,” he said.

“It’s really worrying that they are talking in generality without any real connection on the ground, and it must irritate NHS staff to see this lack of understanding.”

Labour campaign group Momentum said Sir Keir’s proposals “ignore the elephants in the room and risk compounding the problem” in the NHS.

Momentum co-chairwoman Kate Dove said: “Our NHS is on its knees as a result of more than a decade of Tory austerity and underinvestment, resulting in record, deadly waiting times and staff leaving in droves.

“We will not fix this crisis without a major, real-terms investment boost, both to tackle the ongoing recruitment crisis and to adapt to an ageing society.

“As Keir Starmer once suggested, we should also end NHS outsourcing, while putting an end to the NHS privatisation which has driven this crisis, instead of [shadow health secretary] Wes Streeting’s calls for more private sector use of the NHS.”

Keep Our NHS Public co-chairman Dr Tony O’Sullivan compared Sir Keir’s rhetoric to that of former prime ministers Tony Blair and David Cameron.

He said that the three major killers were austerity, a degraded and underfunded NHS, and an “ideological support for private interests.”

Dr O’Sullivan said: “What the people of Britain really want to hear is not Starmer’s ‘three shifts’ — including the mantra: ‘community care not hospitals’ — and another ‘technological revolution’ from the Blair project. We need three ideological shifts from Labour.

“Will they fund the NHS and care services?

“Will they end the feeding of the private parasite eating away at the heart of the NHS?

“Will they respect public servants, provide the staff needed, pay staff well and repay their loyalty for service to a fully public NHS?

“These commitments, if fulfilled, would guarantee the future of the NHS.”

The British Medical Association questioned how Labour plans to attract recruits to the medical profession, given the widespread discontent among existing workers.

Mark Ladbrooke, chairman of Labour’s own health affiliate the Socialist Health Association, said that the “corporate capture on NHS commissioning structures must be undone.”

He said: “Every penny diverted to private healthcare companies is less for urgently needed healthcare to reduce waiting lists.”

NHS Providers, the membership organisation for NHS trusts across the country, also warned that plans could only be realised with “adequate funding” for workers and infrastructure.