‘£8bn fiddle’ over NHS pledge
DAVID Cameron and George Osborne were in a new row over fiddled figures last night over their election pledge to give the NHS an extra £8billion to fill a budget ‘black hole’.
The furore erupted after it was claimed Downing Street was told in an official report that the health service needed £16billion extra a year by 2020 – but dismissed it as ‘a joke’.
No10 allegedly ordered the head of the NHS to cut the figure in half, according to a new book by former Lib Dem Minister David Laws. It follows claims the Chancellor ‘fiddled’ Wednesday’s Budget figures.
Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne’s extra £8billion for the NHS was a centrepiece of their election campaign.
They said the figure was NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens’s independent estimate in October 2014 of how much more hospitals needed annually up to 2020.
But Mr Laws says: ‘Stevens’s original estimate was that the NHS needed £15-16billion extra. No 10’s reaction was, “You’ve got to be joking.”
‘Stevens was told there was no way the PM and Chancellor would sign up to an “impossible and excessive” commitment this size. He was told, “Get it down to a more deliverable sum”.’
Mr Laws says an ‘embarrassed Downing Street massaged the figure down to £8billion with higher and totally unrealistic efficiency savings’.
‘The Stevens report was changed for cynical political
expediency,’ he says. ‘I am not blaming Stevens: he was put under huge pressure.’
Asked why the Lib Dems had not made a fuss before now, Mr Laws says: ‘Nick Clegg and I only discovered the fiddle months after Stevens’ report was published.
‘We were told Stevens asked for at least £15billion but was leaned on to cut it to £8billion.
‘By then, it would have looked odd for the Lib Dems to promise more than the NHS said they wanted or start a huge public row.’ Mr Stevens last night declined to say if he had asked No10 for £16billion or was forced to cut it to £8billion.
His spokesman said: ‘We set out our position in October 2014. Simon Stevens has been more outspoken about the need for a properly funded NHS than any previous NHS chief executive. NHS funding inevitably partly relies on the strength of the UK economy.’
A spokesman for No10 declined to comment last night.