New plans to invest £20bn a year into the NHS

Prime Minister Theresa May has announced: “We’re going to ensure there’s a 10-year plan for the NHS with more doctors, more nurses, and significantly more money invested in the service.” She said that by 2023/24 there will be £20 billion more a year being spent on the NHS “in real terms”. The NHS budget is currently £114 billion, and the new plans will increase this by an average of 3.4% per year, but there has been no confirmation of where this will come from. Health secretary Jeremy Hunt said that any ‘dividend’ from Brexit wouldn’t be “anything like enough” to fund the move. “We are clear there will be an increased burden of taxation” he said.
The ABPI’s chief executive Mike Thompson said the funding announcement for the NHS is “very much welcome. The multi-year settlement will enable partners to work together and focus on improving services, delivering better health outcomes and ensuring greater access to the best treatments and technologies for all NHS patients.”
NHS Confederation chief executive Niall Dickson said the sum “falls some way short of the 4 percent extra-a-year figure which the independent report we commissioned said was required to bring ‘even modest improvements’ given the huge additional demands on the NHS. The truth is that in spite of this welcome extra investment we will face hard choices and we need an honest debate about what the NHS can and cannot do. One danger is that it simply goes to prop up the existing system, which will certainly not be able to cope – even with this injection. Instead there must be a dedicated transformation fund to drive new ways of delivering care. We also remain concerned about the fate of social care. The government says it will make sure the NHS does not come under more pressure as a result of social care pressures – that must mean major public investment in social care – if it is serious about this, the government needs to put its money where its mouth is.”
Independent think tank the International Longevity Centre – UK said: “As Britain’s population continues to live longer and require more healthcare, the prognosis for the NHS remains poor. The International Longevity Centre calculated that if things carry on as they are, health spending could rise from around 6 percent of GDP in 2019-20 to 16.4 percent by 2064-65, which would be completely unsustainable. As we approach the 70th anniversary of the NHS, effective innovation and change is needed as well as more money. Social care remains in crisis, and cannot continue to be isolated from healthcare.”