Javid: No more cash for NHS... it won’t be fair on young
THERE will be no more money for the NHS because it would not be fair on young people, the health Secretary has warned.
Despite chaos in A&e departments, allowing spending to balloon would be at the expense of other services such as education and housing, Sajid Javid said.
It came as NHS chief executive Amanda Pritchard said the current issues in the health service – including ‘unacceptable’ 12-hour waits for emergency care – mean the next two years could be worse than the pandemic.
Mrs Pritchard said: ‘ You can trace the line from delayed discharges to A&e crowding all the way through the slower ambulance response times. It is difficult to see social care capacity being significantly expanded ahead of winter. The last 900 days have been tough. I think the next 900 could be tougher still.’
Health spending accounted for 27 per cent of day-to-day public spending in 2020 and is set to rise to 44 per cent by 2024.
The NHS is already benefiting from a recent £12 billion-a-year funding boost, paid for through a rise in national insurance, but NHS bosses have called for yet more money as they fail to hit targets for routine operations, ambulance response times and A&e admissions.
Mr Javid said the Government was doing ‘everything conceivably possible’ to tackle record waits stemming from the pandemic but stressed there was ‘no quick cure’ and the NHS must become more efficient. he told the NHS Confed expo conference in Liverpool yesterday: ‘This government will always make sure that our health and care system has what it needs to face the future with confidence.
‘We’ve put in record levels of funding in recent years, including raising billions, billions more through the new health and social care levy.
‘But funding will only ever be part of the answer. Growing health spending at double the rate of economic growth over the next decade, as I’ve heard some propose, is neither sustainable, desirable or necessary.
‘I don’t want my children, any children, anyone’s children, to grow up in a country where more than half of public spending is taken up by healthcare at the expense of everything else from education to housing. That’s not a fair deal for the British people, particularly young people.’
A record 6.4 million people are on NHS waiting lists, while A&e trolley waits and ambulance response times have been at an all-time high in recent months. Mr Javid said improvements could be made by sending the best managers to trusts that are underperforming in a bid to turn them around.
He said bosses should not stay in the ‘walled gardens of england’s best-performing trusts’.
Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, which represents health service providers, told the conference: ‘We must learn the lessons of austerity and the “feast or famine” approach to funding. We welcomed last year’s settlement for health and care.
‘We may argue with the Secretary of State and Treasury over its adequacy given the impact of inflation, but we can surely agree that it was only the first step back to financial sustainability.’
It came as a watchdog demanded an ‘ immediate’ response to stop patients dying as they wait in ambulances outside busy A&e departments.
The healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB) said yesterday the entire healthcare service needed to pull together in the same way it did during the pandemic to tackle the crisis.
It recommended the Department of health and Social Care leads an ‘immediate strategic national response’ to address patient safety issues arising from flow into, through and out of hospitals. The department said it would ‘carefully consider these recommendations and respond in due course’.
‘Record levels of funding’