Taxes ‘will pay £20bn NHS bill’
TAX rises to support a £20.5 billion-a-year boost to the NHS budget will be “fair and balanced”, Theresa May has vowed.
The Prime Minister insisted the Government would take a “responsible” approach to the plan, which will see an extra £394 million a week going to the NHS by 2023/24.
She repeated her claim that part of the increase will be funded by a “Brexit dividend” – a suggestion which has been widely attacked as unrealistic, even by some Conservatives.
In a major speech in London, Mrs May acknowledged that “despite more funding, more doctors and more nurses, and great progress on treatments, our NHS is under strain” as it copes with an ageing population and changing health challenges.
“We cannot continue to put a sticking plaster on the NHS budget each year,” she said. “So we will do more than simply give the NHS a one-off injection of cash.
“Under our plan, NHS funding will grow on average by 3.4% in real terms each year from 2019/20 to 2023/24.
“We will also provide an additional £1.25 billion each year to cover a specific pensions pressure. By 2023/24 the NHS England budget will increase by £20.5 billion in real terms compared with today. That means it will be £394 million a week higher in real terms.
“The NHS is this Government’s number one spending priority.”
She did not reveal how all the money would be raised, but said: “Some of the extra funding I am promising today will come from using the money we will no longer spend on our annual membership subscription to the European Union after we have left.”
But she added that the scale of the Government’s ambition went beyond that: “So across the nation, taxpayers will have to contribute a bit more in a fair and balanced way to support the NHS we all use.”
Tory chair of the Commons Health Committee, Sarah Wollaston, branded talk of a Brexit bonanza “tosh”, while shadow chancellor John McDonnell said the Government’s plans were “just not credible”.
Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) Paul Johnson also said the so-called windfall from EU withdrawal would not materialise when the UK stopped paying more than £9 billion a year to Brussels due to the “divorce bill” of some £39 billion, and other economic factors.
Meanwhile, Mrs May has also announced that £20 million is to be pumped into projects that tackle the “profound and devastating impact” of loneliness.
The funding for community projects and charities that bring people together is part of the legacy of murdered Labour MP Jo Cox, who was killed by a white supremacist two years ago, she said.
It comes ahead of the Great Get Together from June 22 to 24, with events taking place across the country to celebrate Mrs Cox’s “more in common” philosophy on what would have been her 44th birthday.