‘Patients will suffer unless NHS gets billions more in the Budget’

NHS FUNDING growth will be at one of the lowest rates in its history, leading think-tanks have said as they called for a multibillion-pound cash injection for the health service in this month’s Budget.

The three health think-tanks – the Health Foundation, The King’s Fund and the Nuffield Trust – calculated that the NHS needed £4bn more next year to prevent patient care from deteriorating following a joint analysis of NHS finances in England. Without an increase of at least £4bn in 2018/19, patients would wait longer for treatment, more services would be rationed and quality of care would deteriorate, the organisations said.

They said that the next financial year would be a “crunch year” for the NHS, with funding growth slowing to 0.4 per cent.

This was “the lowest rate of growth of this parliament and one of the lowest in NHS history”, they added.

Seven years of austerity in the health service, coupled with rising demand, is “taking a mounting toll on patient care”, their briefing adds.

The briefing paper, released ahead of the Budget statement on November 22, estimates that based on current spending plans there will be funding gap of at least £20bn by 2022/23.

The health charities estimated that NHS spending would need to rise from £123.8bn in 2017/18 to at least £153bn in 2022/23 – a 4.3 per cent average annual increase – to keep pace with demographic pressures and increasing costs.

They called on the Government to increase NHS spending in real terms for every year of the parliament.

They also said Ministers should make an “immediate, substantial down-payment on its promise to increase NHS funding by £8bn by the end of the parliament”.

“After seven years of austerity, the dramatic improvements made in health care over the last 20 years are at risk of slipping away,” said Chris Ham, chief executive of The King’s Fund. “The message is clear – unless the government finds the money the NHS and social care need, patients, service-users and their families will suffer the consequences.”

Meanwhile, NHS Providers has called on the Chancellor to recognise that “recovering NHS constitutional standards will require new money”.

Yesterday, the body’s chief executive Chris Hopson said that last year NHS England missed all four major targets – the fourhour A&E standard, the 18-week elective surgery waiting time standard, the expectation that cancer patients will begin treatment within 62 days and the ambulance response time target.

The warnings come as Sir Robert Francis, the chairman of the inquiry into the Mid Staffordshire scandal, told MPs that NHS nursing was in a state of “crisis”.