Please Rachel, may we have some more? Reeves pours £29billion more into struggling NHS every year – but bosses complain it STILL isn’t enough
Rachel Reeves confirmed she will spend almost £30billion a year more on the NHS to help get the country back on track – and bosses immediately said it was not enough.
The Chancellor made the health service one of the big winners in her spending review with a 3 per cent annual uplift taking its funding to £226billion by 2028-29.
But Health Service leaders warned that they could still not guarantee waiting times targets can be met.
The Spending Review forces departments to fund pay increases out of their settlement, but doctors are considering strike action, with unions demanding astronomical pay rises.
Earlier this month resident doctors – formerly junior doctors – warned they could launch co-ordinated industrial action with consultants and specialist doctors, if the groups vote to strike, in a move that would be ‘immensely disruptive for patient care’.
The physicians formerly known as junior doctors are being balloted in England for strike action that could last for six months by the British Medical Association (BMA) following criticism of the Government’s recent pay rise offer of an average 5.4 per cent rise for resident doctors.
Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, which represents all health organisations, said the funding boost was welcome, ‘given the precarious state of public finances and will help the NHS to cope with rising demand from an ageing population, often with multiple or more complex physical and mental health conditions’.
But he warned that ‘difficult decisions will still need to be made as this additional £29 billion won’t be enough to cover the increasing cost of new treatments, with staff pay likely to account for a large proportion of it’.
‘So on its own this won’t guarantee that waiting time targets are met,’ he said.
The Chancellor made the health service one of the big winners in her spending review with a 3 per cent annual uplift taking its funding to £226billion by 2028-29.
The cash injection, widely trailed, came after Sir Keir Starmer pledged to ensure that by the next election 92 per cent of patients in England waiting for planned treatment will be seen within 18 weeks of being referred.
Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, warned that ‘difficult decisions will still need to be made as this additional £29 billion won’t be enough to cover the increasing cost of new treatments, with staff pay likely to account for a large proportion of it’.
The Chancellor defended the Government’s record on the NHS since coming into office, including 1,700 new GPs, 3.5 million more appointments and cutting waiting lists by 200,000.
The cash injection, widely trailed, came after Sir Keir Starmer pledged to ensure that by the next election 92 per cent of patients in England waiting for planned treatment will be seen within 18 weeks of being referred.
She said the Government was spending £10 billion on more digitising services as part of the Government’s 10-year plan for the health service.
But the scale of the spending on the NHS in England – increasing to £226 billion by 2028-29, means squeezing other areas of public expenditure.
Latest NHS data suggests around 60 per cent of people are currently seen in this time and figures released last month showed the overall number of patients on waiting lists had risen slightly from 6.24 million to 6.25 million.
Liberal Democrat Treasury spokeswoman Daisy Cooper welcomed investment in the NHS, but said it needed reform of social care alongside it to work properly.
She told the Commons: ‘The Chancellor knows, the Health and Social Care Secretary knows, this whole Parliament knows that today’s investment in the NHS will be like pouring water into a leaky bucket if hospitals cannot discharge patients who are well enough to leave because there aren’t the care workers to help them recover at home.’
Liberal Democrat Treasury spokeswoman Daisy Cooper welcomed investment in the NHS, but said it needed reform of social care alongside it to work properly.
The NHS was a major winner from Ms Reeves’s first Budget last October, when the Chancellor poured £22.6billion more into the flatlining health service.
At the time Health Secretary Wes Streeting was brutally clear that this may not be enough, because the NHS is ‘not just on its knees, it’s on its face’.
Todasy Ms Reeves faced MPs and said: ‘This Labour Government is making a record cash investment in our NHS, increasing real-terms, day-to-day spending by 3 per cent per year for every year of this spending review.
‘An extra £29 billion per year for the day-to-day running of the health service.
‘That is what the British people voted for and that is what we will deliver. More appointments. More doctors. More scanners.’
Daniel Elkeles, chief executive of NHS Providers, which represents NHS trusts, said: ‘NHS trust leaders aren’t taking the additional funding for granted. Far from it.
‘They know patients, taxpayers and ministers will rightly demand more bang for their buck from the NHS through shorter waiting times and better services.’
However, he said with tough targets to improve access to care right now plus a big maintenance backlog, ‘trust leaders will ask whether the funding announced today enables the NHS to deliver everything being asked of it. We need to have an honest conversation about what the NHS can deliver now and in the future.’
