PATIENTS could be fined for missing NHS appointments in the future, Wes Streeting has hinted.
The Health Secretary appeared to soften his previous blanket opposition to financial penalties as a means of raising cash.
Around eight million hospital appointments are missed every year and costs taxpayers £1billion in wasted time.
Grilled on the possibility of imposing fines, Mr Streeting told Times Radio: "At this stage it's not something I'm looking at doing, but once we've got the system working effectively, if we still have this problem of missed appointments then I might be more open-minded."
He added that he wants to improve the bookings system as a priority - so it is easier to cancel - before getting tough on patients.
Fining people has been considered for a while, with Rishi Sunak famously pledging a £10 penalty for missed appointments before dropping the pledge.
Mr Streeting has been dead against the idea in the past, warning it would be a "slippery slope" to wider NHS charges.
Yesterday he also denied his plan to offer weight-loss jabs to obese unemployed people was a “dystopian future”.
He said the drugs could be “game-changing” in getting people fit enough to go back to work.
The Cabinet Minister said: "They’re not the only solution, and I don’t want to create a dependency culture.
"I’m not interested in some dystopian future where I wander round involuntarily jabbing unemployed people who are overweight. That is not the agenda.
"If we can throw the trends we’re seeing on obesity into reverse, that’s better for the health of the nation, and the nation’s finances, because we’ve got to shift from treating sickness to actively preventing it.
"But that’s not a substitute for good diet and nutrition and exercise."
WES Streeting has told of his inner conflict at deciding whether or not to vote in favour of assisted dying.
The Health Secretary said he worries that a right to die could feel like “a duty to die” if the law is changed.
He said: “I have in my mind’s eye one of my grandmothers who died a very slow painful death, an inevitable death, from lung cancer.
"There are moments thinking back to that time through my 10-year-old eyes even then I would have wished for the pain to end sooner.
“The challenge is, I do not think palliative care, end of life care, in this country is good enough to give people a real choice.
“I worry about coercion and the risk that the right to die feels like a duty to die on the part of particularly older people.
“I am also worried about the slippery slope, and the Canadian experience is not a happy experience as far as I am concerned.
“I am having to weigh those considerations up very carefully.”
Proposals to change the law to legalise assisted dying will be debated and voted on next month.
If politicians back the plan, the law could change as early as next year.
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