NHS boss ‘leant on’ to reduce funding, claims ex-minister
DOWNING Street “leant on” the chief executive of the NHS in England to reduce the amount of money he said was needed to fund the health service, a former Liberal Democrat cabinet minister has claimed.
David Laws told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show yesterday that Simon Stevens had said to Downing Street that the NHS needed to find £30 billion and that £15bn could be found through efficiency savings. But Mr Stevens was then told there was “no way” David Cameron and George Osborne would sign up to providing the other £15bn and that he should cut that figure down, according to Mr Laws.
Meanwhile, shadow health secretary Heidi Alexander said: “These are damning revelations which, if tr ue, suggest David Cameron and George Osborne refused to give the NHS the extra money it needs and instead put pressure on independent offi- cials to massage the figures. Mr Laws told the Marr programme: “At the end of 2014 it was clear that there were huge pressures on the NHS budget. In government our major focus was on getting more money for the NHS in the last year of the coalition in 2015.
“Simon Stevens, the chief executive of the NHS, then decided to go off and do his own piece of work looking at how much the NHS needed over the next five years – in this parliament basically.
“He came up with a figure of about £30bn that I think was about right and he reckoned that half of that could be made in efficiency savings and that he needed the other £15bn from the Treasury.
“The problem seems to be that when he then took that figure to the Conservatives in Number 10, they said ‘you must be kidding, there is no way the Chancellor and the Prime Minister will sign up to that figure, you better get that figure down if you want it to be taken seriously, you better increase the efficiency savings’.”
A spokeswoman for NHS England rejected the idea that anyone in the organisation had been “leant on” by ministers.