NHS needs much more than cash

A £20BILLION hike in the NHS budget by 2023 sounds like a lot of money.

But look at this headline figure more closely and the details are obscured by smoke and mirrors. The Tories are not saying how much the NHS will get this year. Or next. Or the one after that.

But the increase is likely to be less than four per cent over the coming year. Labour would give the NHS a five per cent rise.

And the cash is the absolute minimum the NHS needs to survive. That means it is walking to stand still.

Theresa May will make much of how this extra money translates into today’s cash equivalent of £600million a week.

That is almost double the £350million Boris Johnson promised on the side of his ridiculous red Brexit battlebus.

So there is a political calculation behind this, not just a compassionate one – to take Mrs May’s premiership out of intensive care.

The Foreign Secretary will no longer be able to claim he has not got his Brexit dividend. And that whips the ground of any Tory leadership challenge from under him.

But it would be churlish not to welcome any extra Mrs May is prepared to give the health service after David Cameron starved it of cash.

And we do welcome this. Although we also believe the NHS needs more to become the world leader it once was.

It must be accompanied by a crackdown on the internal fraud we expose today, and reforms in the way the NHS is run.

Only by looking after our beloved NHS can the NHS look after us.