CUT FOREIGN AID TO SAVE STRICKEN NHS
EXCLUSIVE In first major poll of A&E winter crisis, a stunning 78% of voters demand...
VOTERS have demanded that Britain’s bloated foreign aid budget should be slashed so that the crisis-ridden NHS can be given the billions of pounds it desperately needs.
More than three-quarters of people want to divert the flood of cash sent overseas so that it can fund hospitals struggling to cope through the worst crisis for 15 years.
The finding comes in an exclusive poll for The Mail on Sunday – the first taken during the crisis gripping the NHS – which reveals that:
An overwhelming 78 per cent of voters want cuts to Britain’s wasteful £12.4billion annual aid budget, and the money diverted to the Health Service instead;
About four in five think patients should have to show ID at casualty to prevent abuse of the NHS by those who are not entitled to use it;
A similar number support fining drunks who clog up A&E £50 a time;
The majority want a law forcing doctors to open their surgeries at evenings and weekends – showing support for the ‘seven-day GP’
proposals unveiled by the Prime Minister this weekend;
More trust Theresa May with the NHS than Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, despite criticism that the Prime Minister is not taking the winter crisis seriously enough.
Pollsters at Survation quizzed almost 1,200 people on Friday, after a blizzard of warnings, statistics and reports highlighting the dire state of the NHS – and a sustained campaign by The Mail on Sunday about waste in Britain’s aid budget.
Last week it emerged that hospitals were asking relatives to nurse their loved ones back to health at home, as they had run out of space. And in the first week of January, almost 18,500 patients had to endure waits on A&E trolleys as there were no free beds.
The Royal College of Physicians said lives were being put at risk in ‘over-full hospitals’, just days after The Mail on Sunday exposed how many of them were repeatedly at 100 per cent capacity in December.
Against this backdrop, our poll asked which areas of public spending should be cut to boost the NHS. The majority opposed boosting cuts to seven areas, including education, defence and welfare, but 78 per cent said they would slash overseas aid.
If a tenth of the aid budget was diverted to the NHS, the £1.24billion would pay for around three million stays in a hospital bed, which cost £400 a night, or almost 11million A&E visits, which average £114 each.
Last night Conservative MP Philip Davies said: ‘The public has a damn sight more common sense than most Westminster politicians do.
‘It’s ridiculous we are even having this debate because it is so blindingly obvious we should be cutting the overseas aid budget. Lots of it is wasted, and it is unaffordable. Vulnerable, elderly and disabled people at home should be our top priority.’
Last week the British Red Cross claimed NHS hospitals were facing a ‘humanitarian crisis’ – a claim many said was exaggerated.
But Mr Davies, MP for Shipley in West Yorkshire, said when there was such talk ‘then it seems the Government has a perfectly legitimate reason to be scaling back overseas aid and spending it on the NHS and social care. That’s what the public want and expect – and that’s what politicians should be delivering.’
Despite austerity cuts to almost all government departments since 2010, the aid budget has kept rising, thanks to a pledge by David Cameron to commit 0.7 per cent of national income to it. The figure is enshrined in law, and on leaving office last summer Mr Cameron said it was one of his proudest achievements. But this newspaper has campaigned against the targets after highlighting waste caused by officials racing to spend billions.
Examples include £285 million blown on an airport on the remote South Atlantic island of St Helena, where strong winds make it too dangerous for commercial jets to land.
NHS budgets are, of course, much larger – £120.6 billion in England, £10.2billion in Scotland, £7billion in Wales including social care, and a similar sum in Northern Ireland.
But while NHS budgets are being increased in cash terms year after year, soaring demand from Britain’s growing and ageing population means the NHS in England faces a £22billion budget black hole by 2020 unless radical ‘efficiency savings’ are made, according to official forecasts. In the meantime, the service is coming under ever greater strain. Last week NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens told MPs it was wrong to ‘pretend’ there was no funding crisis – and accused Mrs May of ‘stretching’ the truth about how much the Government was spending on health.
Our poll suggests support for radical measures to cut demand in A&Es. More than three-quarters (77 per cent) think free care should be reserved for UK citizens, by requiring patients to show ID.
David Davies, Conservative MP for Monmouth, said: ‘The NHS spends a great deal on people who should not be in the country. The money it costs to treat them could come from the foreign aid budget.’
Seventy-nine per cent back a £50 charge for people who end up in A&E because they have drunk too much alcohol. And 42 per cent approve of an ‘honesty box’ system, like those in museums, with patients encouraged to donate £5.
Last night Shadow Health Secretary Jon Ashworth would not be drawn on whether he supported cutting foreign aid to shore up the NHS and declined to comment on the public’s lack of trust in Jeremy Corbyn on the issue. Instead, he attacked Mrs May’s handling of the crisis as ‘floundering incompetence’.
If foreign aid funds were channelled elsewhere, it would not be the first time. Last year International Development Secretary Priti Patel quietly approved a plan to divert millions in aid to help the war on terror.
Downing Street said last night: ‘The Government has clearly prioritised funding our NHS to deal with an ageing population and other challenges. The NHS will receive over half a trillion pounds over the course of this Parliament. Britain’s aid budget is an investment in our future security and national interest. That is why the Government has targeted aid spending to deliver tangible results that build a safer, more prosperous world for the UK.’