The public’s ideas for the future of the NHS range from weight limits for nurses to charging foreign patients for treatment, the first day of the Government’s consultation has revealed.

       On Monday, Sir Keir Starmer unveiled a “national conversation” on reforming the NHS with a survey for the public, experts and staff, as well as an idea suggestion page, which the Government said would help shape its 10-year health plan.

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       As part of the biggest conversation on the NHS since its inception, the public are able to suggest their own ideas for reform – of which there were more than 800 within hours – and vote others’ suggestions up or down in a league table.

       By lunchtime, the most popular ideas were introducing a “maximum body mass index for nurses” and someone raising awareness of “fish odour syndrome”.

       Those have been deleted since The Telegraph approached the Department of Health for comment about whether the site was being moderated.

       Other bizarre suggestions included “replacing ambulance sirens with healthy eating advice”, “do away with computers” and “offer lobotomies to the population of Birmingham”.

       There were more serious ideas being proposed, however, such as improving access to NHS dentistry, creating digital records, clamping down on NHS fraud and reducing bureaucracy.

       Among the most popular ideas that remained were charging patients for missed appointments, scrapping paper letters in favour of a digital approach, and to increase and enforce what visitors to the country pay for NHS services.

       Fining patients who miss appointments or cancel within 24 hours is already practised by private healthcare companies such as Bupa and was proposed by Rishi Sunak during the 2022 Tory leadership contest.

       Wes Streeting, Health Secretary, said he was “open-minded” to the idea if other reforms failed to reduce the eight million “did not attends” each year during an interview on Sunday.

       The public were also keen to enforce medical insurance for tourists or non-residents working in the UK to cover any treatments they have while in the UK.

       One person who claimed they had worked as an NHS nurse previously said: “This could be checked at their departure airport/port at check-in and also on arrival here and if they don’t have it, they are returned to where they have come from. We all know people do and will travel (with serious health issues and pregnancies) just to utilise our free NHS treatments.

       “This would ensure money is available for the NHS to utilise for recruitment and help build it back up. Would also cut down waiting lists and free up beds for our patients,” they said.

       Other people suggested the NHS create its own “pharmaceutical brand” to produce generic drugs, while others said it should stop prescribing unneeded items such as paracetamol that people end up not using.

       Sir Keir, speaking at the consultation launch in east London, said: “We want to hear from you and from as wide a number of people as possible, both in the NHS and people who are using the NHS, because this needs to be the once-in-a-generation opportunity for you to put your fingerprints on the future – literally to craft the service that you are working for.

       “This is a really important conversation to create that NHS of the future, a moment in our history.”

       He said that in decades to come he wanted people to look back and say that his Government “made sure the NHS is fit for the next 75 years”.

       Responding to some of the left-field suggestions, Wes Streeting wrote on X that having “Wetherspoons in every hospital” was a “great idea, but sadly vetoed by the Chancellor during Budget negotiations”.

       He added: “Thanks also to the person who suggested I be fired out of a cannon to raise money for the NHS. No.”

       One person suggested that the NHS “open hospitals an hour earlier so they can get more work done”, while another called for A&Es to employ a “go-home man” to tell those not requiring urgent care to leave.

       A Department of Health and Social Care spokesman said: “We’re launching the biggest national conversation about the future of the NHS, inviting the whole country to share their experiences in order to shape the Government’s 10-year health plan and put staff and patients at the heart of reform.

       “The online platform has a moderation process in place to ensure that content is removed or hidden in cases where it is clearly inappropriate or irrelevant.”