How should the NHS be funded?

Taxes are going to have to rise to pay for the NHS if the UK is to avoid “a decade of misery” in which the old, sick and vulnerable are let down, according to experts.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Health Foundation said last week the NHS would need an extra 4% a year – or £2,000 per UK household – for the next 15 years.

The announcement came days after leading doctors in Scotland wrote to the prime minister calling for more details about the future funding of the NHS.

The presidents of three royal medical colleges north of the border signed a letter to Theresa May regarding her promise, made in March, to bring forward a longer-term plan for financing the health service.

In Scotland, it is Holyrood that decides what resources are to be devoted to the NHS, in the context of devolved public expenditure. Of approximately £34.7 billion controlled by the Scottish Government, around £12.9 billion is spent on health.

But is funding the answer to NHS ills? Professor Dilip Nathwani, director of the Tayside Academic Health Sciences Partnership, believes more efficiencies are required and also thinks the NHS needs a “greater slice of overall funding”.

But he also thinks there needs to be a “mature and transparent conversation about how the NHS looks at external and commercial opportunities.” He said: “It is not about privatisation – I have never bought into that – but the way other systems conduct some business with commercial partners to the gain of healthcare needs to be better explored.”

Professor Dilip Nathwani.