Giving £2bn is like starving someone for a month then handing them a bowl of cornflakes
Doc slates social care emergency cash boost
THE cash-starved NHS will receive an extra £100million after the Budget, a figure experts slammed as woefully inadequate.
Chancellor Philip Hammond’s measly one-off boost is just 0.085% of the £117billion annual health budget.
His emergency injection of £2.4billion over three years to ease the social care crisis was also blasted.
Dr Peter Trewby, of Doctors for the NHS, said: “Two billion quid for social care sounds a fortune but it is on a par with starving someone for a month then offering them a bowl of cornflakes above what you’ve been giving them... nowhere near enough.”
The NHS is suffering its worst ever crisis, with huge A&E delays, missed 999 targets and deluged staff feeling overwhelmed and demoralised.
British Medical Association chairman Dr Mark Porter warned the Budget does nothing to address the gaping hole in NHS finances.
He said: “There is a £30billion gap to fill. We should be increasing health spending by at least £10.3billion to match that of other leading European economies.
“The NHS and social care are at breaking point and have been failed by party politics for too long.”
The tiny funding rise announced yesterday is to help shift GPs into casualty departments with the intention of easing pressure by helping to decide which patients need urgent treatment. But Dr Porter said: “Having GPs in A&E won’t reduce admissions, if anything this could have the effect of attracting more patients to hospitals. The Government also needs to explain how it will fund and recruit GPs to work on site at hospitals when there already aren’t enough to meet the needs of the public.”
Mr Hammond also earmarked another £325million over three years for NHS “sustainability and transformation plans”, which critics say are simply a cloak for cuts.
Ministers have previously ordered health officials to find an unprecedented £22billion of NHS savings, with the Government claiming it is pumping
This does nothing to address the gaping hole in NHS finances BMA CHAIRMAN PUTS BOOT INTO THE BUDGET
in £10billion by 2020, a figure watchdogs have cast doubt on.
Around 250,000 people marched in London at the weekend to protest against the health service crisis.
Figures revealed yesterday that one in six cancer patients is not treated in the recommended time after a hospital gets an urgent GP referral.
The King’s Fund think-tank reckons the number of patients in England waiting for ops will soon top four million for the first time in a decade.
A mum told of her shock in January after her sick boy was left lying on two hospital chairs due to a lack of beds.
Rose Newman, 27, of Eastbourne, East Sussex, waited for five hours in A&E with toddler Jack, who had suspected meningitis, as staff tried to cope with the volume of patients.
The mum and partner Andy, 30, put the chairs together as a makeshift bed. The NHS in England deals with more than a million patients every 36 hours, including at 168 NHS acute trusts, which manage hospitals.
Activists accuse the Tories of running down the health service as an excuse for more privatisation.
Town halls welcomed the cash for the social care sector, which has been battered by Tory austerity, but said services would still have to be slashed.
Mr Hammond said: “The [social care] system is clearly under pressure, and this... puts pressure on our NHS.”
Unison general secretary Dave Prentis said the cash “doesn’t even come close to making up for the funding cut since 2010 and won’t stop extreme rationing of care”.