Social care funds ‘may be used up by the NHS’

THE NHS could swallow up most of the £12billion a year extra for health and social care, economists warned yesterday.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) cast doubt on the Government’s pledge to use a new levy to both tackle the NHS backlog and fix social care.

Under the plans announced this week, the NHS will get the bulk of the £36billion raised in the first three years by the tax hike, with £5.4billion for social care in England. The balance is expected to tip towards social care in subsequent years as the £86,000 cap on costs introduced from October 2023 starts to require funding.

But the IFS suggested the health service would continue to require the bulk of the revenue raised by the new tax.

Ben Zaranko, a research economist at the think-tank, said: ‘The extra funding provided for the NHS will result in spending growing at 3.9 per cent a year between 2018/19 and 2024/25, exactly the same rate of growth as was planned between 2018/19 and 2023/24.

‘History suggests these plans will be topped up further – they have been in almost every year for the last 40 years.

‘That could leave little, if any, of the tax rises announced yesterday available for social care.’

But Health Secretary Sajid Javid insisted that the extra money would be moved from the NHS to tackle social care. ‘It’s clear that more and more after three years will shift towards social care because, not least, by that time the money over the next three years that will go to the NHS will be able to deal with so much of the challenge they are facing around the waiting list,’ he told Times Radio.

Talking to the BBC, he could not say how much lower NHS waiting lists would be despite the cash injection – although said they would be ‘a lot, lot lower’.

Mr Javid last night announced plans to ‘harness’ the latest technology and innovative ways of working to cut waiting lists. Surgical hubs will be expanded across the country, while pop-up clinics, virtual wards and home assessments will be used more widely to free up hospital beds.

The IFS warning came as the Resolution Foundation think-tank said the proportion of public service spending on the NHS would rise to 40 per cent by 2025 – up from 28 per cent in 2004. Its chief executive Torsten Bell said: ‘The Prime Minister has turned his back on low taxes in favour of an NHS-dominated state.’