Hammond: NHS is not facing ‘Armageddon’
Chancellor downplays health service chief’s plea for an extra £4billion amid tension ahead of Budget
PHILIP HAMMOND has put the Government on a collision course with the NHS on the eve of the Budget as he suggested the health service would not face “Armageddon” if its funding warnings were not heeded. The Chancellor insisted ministers had given Simon Stevens, the head of NHS England, the funding he asked for to ensure it can handle growing pressure on services.
But the NHS hit back, denying that was the case and pointed out Mr Stevens had made clear on numerous occasions that funding demands had not been met. The clash between the Treasury and the health service is likely to overshadow the prospect of a pay rise for nurses which is expected to be announced in Wednesday’s Budget.
The policy is due to be part of a series of announcements designed to reinvigorate a Government which has appeared to lurch from one crisis to the next in recent weeks.
A major package of house building measures is expected to form the centrepiece of Mr Hammond’s financial blueprint. However, any hopes of a trouble-free build up to the Budget faded after the Chancellor appeared to make light of NHS funding concerns.
Mr Stevens recently delivered a stark warning to the Treasury as he said the health service needed an extra £4billion to prevent a significant decline in NHS performance. Without extra funds, waiting times will rise to a record high of five million patients, with one in 10 people stuck on a waiting list by 2021, Mr Stevens said.
But Mr Hammond downplayed the warning, telling The Andrew Marr Show on BBC One: “Let me tell you a Budget secret. In the run-up, people running all kinds of services and Government departments, come to see us and they always have very large numbers that are absolutely essential otherwise Armageddon will arrive.”
Meanwhile, Mr Hammond said the Government had given Mr Stevens the £10 billion of extra funding by 2020 which he had asked for in 2014. The Chancellor said: “We agreed to fund that and that plan is not at the moment being delivered. We understand the pressures the NHS is under from higher demand than predicted and of course we want to work with the NHS to address the problems and get it back on track to deliver its targets.”
Mr Hammond’s comments were followed by NHS England tweeting numerous statements made by Mr Stevens in the past when he has disputed the claim that the Government had provided the health service with the funding it had asked for. NHS England posted one quote from Mr Stevens from 2016 when he said “we did not get what we originally asked for” and another from earlier this year when he said “we got less than we asked for”.
The idea that the NHS got the funding it requested has been hotly disputed. In October 2016 Mr Stevens told the Commons Health Select Committee: “But for the next three years we didn’t get the funding that the NHS had requested, this is not a controversial statement, this is what I have already said to the Public Accounts Committee so it is not a new statement, so as a result we have got a bigger hill to climb.
“It’s going to be a more challenging 2017, 2018, 2019/20.”