British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak reshuffled his senior ministerial team on Monday, appointing Victoria Atkins, former Financial Secretary to the Treasury, as the new Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. Atkins takes over from Steve Barclay, who has been relocated to the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs.
Atkins will be responsible for overseeing the National Health Service (NHS), the country’s publicly funded healthcare system facing challenges such as ongoing industrial action by health workers and a growing backlog of patients awaiting treatment.
The NHS currently grapples with a record-high waiting list of approximately 7.8 million people, a notable increase from the previous year’s 7 million. Sunak has identified reducing these waiting lists as one of his top five priorities. However, he acknowledges the difficulty in achieving this goal within the current year, attributing the setback to months of industrial action affecting progress.
