No quick cash cure for NHS
As ambulances queue up at A&E, Javid says...
HEALTH Secretary Sajid Javid has been blasted after trying to make the case for squeezing NHS funding amid a crisis in hospital A&Es.
Mr Javid told healthcare leaders there is “no quick cure” to the crisis and even suggested funding must be scaled back from historic levels.
His remarks at the NHS ConfedExpo came after NHS England boss Amanda Pritchard said it is difficult to see the social care crisis, which is leading to a logjam in hospitals, improving before winter.
A&Es are full, with ambulances backed up, which is leading to unprecedented dangerous 999 waits.
Speaking in Liverpool, Mr Javid said: “Funding will only ever be part of the answer. Growing 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, 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.”
The NHS’s historical average annual funding increase from its inception in 1948 to 2009 – the year before the Tories came to power – was 4%.
NHS Confederation says the latest financial settlement of 4.3% in real terms could now be worth around 2.6% due to inflation.
Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the
NHS Confederation, called for an “explicit commitment to the kind of real-term funding... of at least 4% per year for the next decade”.
More than 1,000 people are waiting more than 12 hours in A&E departments every day, according to the Royal College of Emergency Medicine. But the RCEM states that the figures are actually a “gross under-representation of the reality”.
Dr David Wrigley, council deputy chair at the British Medical Association, warned: “Waiting lists are at a record high. Doctors and colleagues are exhausted, demoralised and overstretched. The NHS is suffering from a growing capacity gap.”
Rehana Azam, GMB union’s national secretary, said: “The fact the Health Secretary is saying that there is no fast cure for the NHS is an example as to why this person shouldn’t be in charge.
“How many more people need to die before this Government realise they have let us all down when it comes to our fundamental human right of having basic healthcare needs met.”
Waiting lists are at a record high.. doctors are exhausted, demoralised
DR DAVID WRIGLEY ON GROWING CAPACITY GAP