Wes Streeting Approval Rating: How the Health Secretary Polls After 18 Months

Eighteen months into his tenure as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Wes Streeting occupies an unusual position in British politics. He is one of the most prominent members of the Starmer Cabinet, frequently quoted, frequently controversial, and frequently the subject of polling scrutiny. His net approval of around −15% is significantly better than the Prime Minister’s −35%, but in a field — the NHS — where public expectations are highest and satisfaction currently lowest, the political terrain he navigates is exceptionally difficult. Here is what the data actually shows.

The Approval Numbers: What -15% Means for a Health Secretary

Net approval for Cabinet ministers below Prime Minister and Chancellor level is typically a secondary concern in political polling. Most voters have limited awareness of departmental ministers outside high-profile crises. What makes Streeting’s polling notable is that awareness of him is unusually high for a Health Secretary: approximately 71% of respondents in YouGov polling from March 2026 said they had heard of him and had a view of his performance. For comparison, at an equivalent stage in his tenure Sajid Javid was known to approximately 58% of respondents.

Of those with a view, 28% approve of Streeting’s performance, 43% disapprove, and 29% say they do not know enough to judge. The −15% net is therefore a calculation among those with an opinion. Decomposed further: approval is highest among Labour’s own 2024 voters (52%), substantially lower among those who identify as politically independent (21%), and deeply negative among those who have switched to Reform UK (6% approve, 81% disapprove).

The −15% figure also needs contextualising against what a Health Secretary during an NHS crisis can realistically expect. With the waiting list above 7 million, A&E four-hour target compliance running below 70%, and the British Social Attitudes survey recording overall NHS satisfaction at 24% — the lowest since the survey began in 1983 — the political ceiling for any health minister’s personal approval is structurally constrained. Streeting is being judged against a backdrop of accumulated system failure, most of which predates his appointment.

NHS Satisfaction Under Labour: The Inherited Crisis and Labour’s Own Record

The NHS satisfaction data is the single most important context for evaluating Streeting’s polling position. The 24% overall satisfaction figure from the 2025 British Social Attitudes survey represents a fall from 29% in 2023 and 49% in 2019. The trajectory predates Labour’s arrival in government by years — the collapse in GP appointment availability, the post-Covid elective surgery backlog, and the sustained underinvestment in NHS workforce and infrastructure accumulated under successive Conservative governments since 2010.

However, voter perceptions do not always track causal responsibility. Polling from Ipsos in February 2026 asked voters who they blamed for the current state of the NHS. 54% said “the previous Conservative government” bears primary responsibility; 29% said “the current Labour government is not fixing it fast enough”; 11% said NHS management itself. The 29% blaming current inaction is politically significant: it suggests that the inheritance argument, which has genuine evidential support, is already losing purchase among a substantial minority of voters.

Among voters aged 65 and over — the cohort most dependent on NHS services and most likely to vote — the blame distribution is more unfavourable for Labour. In this group, 42% say the current government is not doing enough, compared with 46% who blame the Conservative legacy. The gap between the two narratives is narrowing precisely among the voters Labour most needs to retain.

Comparing Streeting to Predecessors: Hancock, Javid, and Barclay

Direct polling comparisons across Health Secretaries are complicated by methodological differences and the radically different political contexts of each tenure. Matt Hancock’s personal approval, never high, fell to around −28% by the time of his resignation in June 2021 over lockdown rule violations. The Covid context inflated both his public profile and the intensity of voter disapproval. Sajid Javid, appointed in 2021 to manage the post-Covid health recovery, started at around −6% among those with a view and moved to approximately −18% over his tenure, driven largely by the scale of the waiting list he was visibly unable to reduce.

Steve Barclay, the final Conservative Health Secretary before the 2024 election, had among the lowest public profiles of any recent holder of the post, with large numbers of voters unable to name the Health Secretary at any point during his tenure. His approval among those who could name him ran at approximately −22%. The context for all three predecessors is important: Streeting’s −15% is better than any Conservative Health Secretary’s rating since Jeremy Hunt’s period of relative stability between 2012 and 2016, and Hunt himself was mired in junior doctor disputes that drove his personal approval negative.

Where Streeting differs most from his predecessors is in public communication style. He has been more visibly confrontational about NHS internal culture, more willing to attribute system failures to management as well as resources, and more publicly supportive of private sector involvement in NHS delivery. These positions have generated strong reactions: approval among voters who support greater private involvement in health runs at 51%; disapproval among those who oppose it runs at 68%. His net rating is therefore a composite of strongly opposed subsets partially cancelling each other out.

NHS Workers and Patients: How They Rate Streeting

Polling of healthcare professionals presents a more challenging picture than the general public data. A survey of NHS clinical staff conducted by the Health Foundation in November 2025 found that approximately 61% of respondents disapproved of Streeting’s performance, with 22% approving and 17% unsure. The specific drivers of disapproval among healthcare workers are identifiable from the open-ended responses: his characterisation of NHS culture as part of the problem was cited as “unhelpful” or “damaging” by 44% of disapproving respondents.

Junior doctors, who reached a pay settlement in autumn 2024 after years of industrial action, show somewhat more favourable views: approximately 34% approval in a BMA survey from early 2026, up from 12% during the peak of the pay dispute in 2023. The resolution of the junior doctor strikes was politically important for Streeting personally and delivered a meaningful improvement in his professional standing within the NHS workforce, even if it did not translate proportionally into public approval figures.

Patient experience polling offers a more nuanced picture. Among voters who report a recent positive NHS experience — those who have had a GP appointment within two weeks, or who have had a procedure after a wait of less than 18 weeks — Streeting’s approval runs at 39%. Among those who report a negative recent experience — waits above 18 weeks, A&E waits above four hours, inability to get a GP appointment within a month — his approval falls to 14%. His personal rating closely tracks the operational reality of NHS delivery, which is simultaneously his greatest political risk and his most direct argument for why system reform matters.

The Reform Agenda and Its Polling Implications

Streeting has positioned himself as a reform Health Secretary in a way his predecessors did not. His “broken model” framing of the NHS, his advocacy for neighbourhood health centres, and his explicit support for patients using private providers paid for by the NHS have all generated political controversy. The political rationale is that the NHS cannot continue to function as it currently does and that being honest with voters about the need for fundamental change, rather than just more money, is the only credible position available.

Whether this has helped his personal approval is unclear. Polling on the specific reforms shows mixed but not catastrophically negative results: 52% of voters support expanding NHS use of private sector capacity if it reduces waiting times; 49% support neighbourhood health centres as a concept; 41% support the workforce reform framework published in late 2025. Where the numbers are weaker is on the structural framing — only 31% agree with the statement that “the NHS model itself needs fundamental change rather than more investment,” suggesting Streeting’s intellectual case for reform is ahead of where the electorate currently sits.

Polling already shows that 62% of voters agree that Labour’s NHS record will be “a decisive factor” in how they vote in 2029, well above the 44% who said the same about any other single policy area. The NHS is the ground on which the next election will be decided, and Streeting’s personal standing will rise or fall with it.

Voting Intent Among NHS-Dependent Voters

NHS satisfaction and voting intent are more tightly linked than at almost any point in the modern polling era. Among voters who cite the NHS as their most important issue, the distribution in April 2026 polling is: Labour 29%, Reform UK 24%, Conservative 22%, Liberal Democrat 16%, and others 9%. Labour’s relative strength on this issue — despite the system’s current state — reflects the party’s historic ownership of NHS credibility, but the Reform UK figure is alarming: a protest-vote party drawing a quarter of NHS-prioritising voters signals that even Labour’s strongest terrain is being eroded.

For Streeting personally, the most significant political task before the 2029 election is to deliver a visible, measurable improvement in NHS performance that converts current approval levels into a broader coalition. See the full voting intention tracker and the Labour two-year anniversary verdict for the broader context in which his ratings sit.

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