IIn 2010, the Commons Health Select Committee warned the new Conservative-led government that the NHS in England was facing cuts rather than the promised increases in real terms. The message could not be easily dismissed as the committee was chaired at the time by a former Tory minister. Now, eight health secretaries later, plus a change, plus c’est la même chose. The Institute for Fiscal Studies said this week that daily NHS spending had grown by 2.7% per year during the current parliament, well below the 3.3% annual increases promised by Boris Johnson in 2019.
The Tories claimed they were the biggest at the last election party of the NSin an attempt to profit from Brexit unfounded say it’s good for health care. Voters today won’t accept that. Long waiting lists at hospitals for elective surgeries and frustration over the lack of access to primary care physicians have led to public satisfaction with health care falling to an all-time low. An approximate 250 patients in England, people die unnecessarily every week due to emergency department queues. Both the government and NHS England blame industrial action for waiting lists not falling fast enough. But like the Nuffield Trust The health think tank pointed out last year that it was “unlikely that the lost activity would have been enough to reduce waiting lists”.
It is true that the pandemic and the cost of living shock have not made life easy for ministers. But there is resistance in Conservative ranks to seeing the NHS as a national investment that improves social welfare, protects people from the financial impact of illness, reduces health. inequalities and supports economic growth. On the contrary, it is seen by many Tories as a drain on the public purse.
By 2010/11 to 2019/20the average increase in healthcare funding was less than 2%, leading to a deficit of around £30 billion in the annual budget, compared to what would have been expected if the NHS had received the historical rate of spending that allowed it to keep pace with the long-term pressures of demographics, medical advances and rising patient expectations. The result was that the number of patients who had been referred to the hospital but were still waiting for treatment doubled from 2.3 million in January 2010 to 4.6 million in December 2019.
Covid-19 only made matters worse – the total waiting list for routine treatments was €7.54 million February. There are insufficient resources available to eliminate the backlog. Demand for private healthcare has skyrocketed, leading to concerns about: twofold system. Sir Keir Starmer says his party will get the healthcare system “back on its feet”. This can be expensive. Labor has signed up to the government’s NHS workforce plan, which involves an annual budget is increasing of 3.6% per year in real terms. In Sir Keir’s defense, he might say this is a long-term ambition. However, the Labor leader may not want to leave it for too long. A winter flu crisis and mounting public anger forced Tony Blair to hand over NHS spending in 2000. Surely it would be better if Sir Keir was ahead rather than behind.