Alarm over Liz Truss raid on NHS

Hospital bosses have warned that they face “impossible choices” under Liz Truss’s plan to divert £10 billion a year from the NHS to social care.

They say that her pledge to remove cash earmarked for the health service will “slam the brakes” on efforts to tackle record waiting lists, with patients bearing the brunt.

An extra £36 billion has been ring-fenced for health and care spending over the next three years, of which less than £2 billion a year is due to go towards social care. Truss, the frontrunner in the Conservative leadership contest, has announced that as prime minister she will divert the entire amount to local authorities to pay for older people’s care. This would create a £10 billion shortfall in annual NHS spending, the equivalent of imposing a 7 per cent budget cut on the service.

NHS bosses say that they would have no choice but to cut services as they face the worst winter crisis in living memory, forcing patients to wait longer for treatment. There are already 6.7 million people on waiting lists, while patients are dying because of a sharp increase in ambulance response times and accident and emergency waiting times are the worst on record.

Truss told a Times Radio hustings: “I still would spend the money. I would just take it out of general taxation rather than raising national insurance. But I would spend that money in social care. Quite a lot has gone to the NHS. I would give it to local authorities.”

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Source: The Times (25 August 2022)