Now the NHS wants an extra £7billion
THE boss of the NHS has claimed the service is under more pressure now than during the pandemic as she tries to plug a £ 7billion funding gap.
Amanda Pritchard confirmed she is negotiating with ministers for more money, saying: ‘They are aware that NHS budgets will only stretch so far.’
But Wes Streeting, Labour’s health and social care spokesman, yesterday warned the NHS will cease to exist if governments keep pouring in more taxpayers’ cash without reform.
Health officials are seeking to close a £7billion shortfall next year, which has been fuelled by soaring inflation and staff pay rises.
Mrs Pritchard, chief executive of NHS England, told a conference of
‘We are dealing with uncertainty’
health leaders it was difficult ‘not to be realistic about some of the challenges’ the NHS faces.
A record 7million in England – one in eight of the population – are currently on waiting lists and there are fears the backlog could keep rising until 2025.
Speaking at the King’s Fund conference, Mrs Pritchard said: ‘When I started this job, I think I said at the time I thought that the pandemic would be the hardest thing any of us ever had to do.
‘Over the last year, I’ve become really clear and I’ve said a number of times, it’s where we are now – it’s the months and years ahead that will bring the most complex challenges.’ She added: ‘I think it is harder now. Why?
Because, partly, we no longer have a single unifying mission.
‘Instead, we are dealing with paradoxes, we’re dealing with complexity and we are dealing with uncertainty.’
She admitted the NHS was ‘not in a unique position’ when it came to battling the effects of inflation and that the government was ‘aware that NHS budgets will only stretch so far’.
Mrs Pritchard said the NHS had already found efficiency savings worth billions of pounds but a £7billion gap remained.
Speaking at the same conference, Mr Streeting said: ‘If the answer to the NHS challenge in the long term is only ever increasing amounts of taxpayers money into a 20th century model of care, then there isn’t going to be an NHS in the future – there certainly isn’t going to be an NHS that’s publicly funded and free of points of use in the future.’
Sir Jim Mackey, the NHS boss responsible for tackling the backlog, said the health service is stuck in a ‘1940s model’ that means it carries out millions of ‘pointless’ hospital appointments.
The Prime Minister told the Cabinet on Tuesday that health service spending will be prioritised, as other departments face cuts, in the Autumn Statement on November 17.
LIKE high priests serving some insatiable pagan deity, health bosses demand ever greater sacrifices to the NHS.
Record sums of public money have been crammed into the health service’s maw. And still it hungers for more.
With wearying predictability, chief executive Amanda Pritchard yesterday called for another £7billion.
Taxpayers, braced for further crippling tax rises, might reasonably ask: where has all the money gone? Yes, winter looms and the NHS is again in crisis, with seven million patients on waiting lists for treatment.
But the behemoth can surely make savings – starting by scrapping diversity managers. when even Labour warns of the need for reform, isn’t it time the NHS took the hint?