Labour’s Wes Streeting says it’s time for NHS to get real on the billions it wastes – including £210m on STAMPS

IT is time for the NHS to get real on the billions it wastes, Wes Streeting tells The Sun today.

Labour's health boss has identified £10 billion of fat in the system including £210 million a year on STAMPS - a decade after the NHS vowed to go post free.

He will today launch a red tape efficiency challenge, as Labour pledge to halve spending on outside management consultants.

Mr Streeting will also vow to end the scandal of one in four missed outpatient appointments due to NHS admin issues, which costs another £300 million a year.

Warning more money is not the answer, he instead says a programme of reform will be top of his agenda if Labour win the election.

His war on waste will also target the seven million patients going to A&E because they can’t get see a GP - leading to £2.5 billion extra in costs.

And he will cite a leaked NHS England document that shows one in five patients who miss appointments don’t even know they have one.

He argues there are easy tech solutions to solving the one in ten patients who try to cancel appointments but are unable to get through.

He will say a trust which trialled texting patients to give them the option to rearrange or cancel cut missed appointments almost in half.

In an interview ahead of his speech to the Institute for Government today, he will say even his local barbershop is more tech savvy than the NHS.

“I got a text message saying we tried to reach you on the phone to confirm your haircut… If you don't text back to reply yes by 5pm, we'll be cancelling your appointment. Why can’t the NHS do that?”

He told the Sun last night: “What we have done is identified best practice in the NHS that is proven to work, proven to deliver better outcomes for patients and proven to deliver better value for taxpayers money.

“The question I pose the system is, if you can do it in one hospital, why aren't you doing it in all hospitals?”

He will also warn more cash is not the answer to the NHS’s problems, adding: “You can't just keep on pouring ever increasing amounts of money into a leaky bucket, you've got to deal with the bucket itself.”