HEALTH SECRETARY Wes Streeting said that Labour “should be really worried” over Reform UK’s sweeping victories in last week’s local elections during his address and Q&A at the Usdaw annual conference today.

He described the far-right populist party as a “threat” to the NHS after its leader Nigel Farage suggested that Britain needs “to move to an insurance-based system of healthcare.”

Mr Streeting stressed that he understood the cynicism in politics after years of “incompetence, failure and corruption” but added that he would have had to borrow money or go into debt if he had to pay privately for his NHS kidney cancer treatment in 2021.

Despite his MP’s salary, “I do not have, coming from a working-class family, money sitting in savings I could just spend on private healthcare,” he claimed.

Asked about the government’s plans to cut disability benefits and plans for NHS dentistry, which it has faced renewed criticism over following last Thursday’s poll, the minister added: “The truth is NHS dentistry doesn’t exist in huge parts of the country.

“My ambition is to get NHS dentistry back to where it should be, which is there for everyone not just a few people who can get a dentist.”

On the plans to introduce stricter criteria for personal independence payments, he added: “We are consulting on lots of the changes at the moment, there will be a debate in parliament soon, there will be a vote, and we are listening to people.”

He also confirmed that the government’s plans to ban conversion therapies will be “a trans inclusive ban.”