NHS under Tories throwing away £10bn a year, claims Labour

AROUND £10 billion a year is being wasted by the NHS, Labour has claimed.

Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, will say in a keynote speech today that taxpayers are “paying more but getting less” from the service under the Tories, promising reforms to provide better value for money.

In the dossier, Labour highlights the £3.5 billion spent on recruitment agencies, could have been used to train more staff and that £1.7 billion had been spent on hospital beds for patients who were well enough to leave, but lacked care at home. It also points to £1 billion wasted because some hospitals spent twice as much as others on the same equipment, with a further £636 million spent on management consultants.

In his speech at the Institute of Government, Mr Streeting will say such funds should be used to reform the NHS, and divert far more money to the front line.

Mr Streeting, who has previously said the NHS “uses every winter crisis and every challenge it faces as an excuse to ask for more money”, will say the service should provide “better value for taxpayers” as well as better care for patients.

Promising to turn around the crisis in the NHS, Mr Streeting is expected to say: “I am focusing on waste because I want to give the public hope that the NHS can be saved. The money that is wasted today can be used to get the NHS back on its feet tomorrow. Only Labour has a plan to reform the NHS.”

Labour has said many of its plans – including doubling the number of NHS scanners and carrying out an extra 2 million operations, scans and appointments annually – will be costed by abolition of non-dom status. But the Tories question whether it is achievable for all the policies to be funded by this one move. Mr Streeting will promise “costfree”

reforms, with further details of plans to allow health visitors to administer vaccines, to tackle the measles crisis.

The Conservatives have also highlighted comments by Sir Keir Starmer suggesting Wales is a “blueprint” for what a Labour government would do, pointing to the fact the country’s waiting times are far worse than those in England.

Victoria Atkins, the Health and Social Care Secretary, said: “We have been able to deliver record funding for the NHS alongside the NHS’ first ever Longterm Workforce Plan meaning more doctors and nurses. By sticking to the plan that Rishi Sunak has set out, we will strengthen the economy, that’s how you pay for a strong NHS.”

Calling Labour’s 2030 energy plan an “unfunded £28 billion spending spree” which would take the country “back to square one”, she said: “Labour can’t say how they would pay for their policies because they don’t have a plan and that means less money for the NHS. Look at what’s happening where Labour do run the NHS in Wales: budgets cut and the longest hospital waits in the UK.”

‘The money that is wasted today can be used to get the NHS back on its feet tomorrow’