Chancellor announces £22.6bn cash injection for NHS in England

The NHS in England is to receive a £22.6bn cash injection over two years, the chancellor has announced, in what she called the biggest spending increase outside Covid since 2010. But health experts said patients may not feel the impact as much of the increase would be absorbed by pay rises and higher care costs.

Announcing the “down payment” on the government’s 10-year plan for the NHS, due in spring 2025, Rachel Reeves said the NHS was the nation’s “most cherished public service” and that the extra funding would help the government cut waiting lists.

“This is the largest real-terms growth in day-to-day NHS spending outside of Covid since 2010,” she said. “Because of this record injection of funding, because of the thousands of additional beds that we have secured, and because of the reforms that we are delivering in our NHS, we can now begin to bring waiting lists down more quickly and move towards our target for waiting times to be no longer than 18 weeks by delivering on our manifesto commitment for 40,000 extra hospital appointments a week.”

Health experts welcomed the extra funding but cautioned that more investment in the NHS would be needed for patients to notice the difference. Siva Anandaciva, the chief analyst at the King’s Fund thinktank, said: “The health spending announced today is unlikely to be enough for patients to see a real improvement in the care they receive.”

While the budget increase would help sustain services, “it is unlikely to drastically improve care over the rest of this year, and certainly not overnight”, he added, because much of the £22.6bn extra would be absorbed by NHS staff pay increases and the rising cost of delivering care.

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Source: The Guardian, 30 October 2024