06.10.14
NHS and social services at ‘breaking point’, medical coalition warns
The NHS and social care services are at “breaking point”, with the health sector facing a £30bn funding black hole by 2020, a leading group of medical organisations and charities has warned.
In a letter addressed to the leaders of the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats – who have made major NHS pledges in recent weeks – the experts said that under the coalition, the health budget has been maintained in an era of unprecedented austerity.
“However, historic annual increases in the health budget, designed to keep pace with a growing and ageing population, have been severely reduced – meaning that our NHS has just been through the longest, and most damaging budget squeeze in its history,” they said.
Signatories of the letter include leading figures from the British Medical Association, the Royal College of Nursing, the Royal College of Midwives, the Alzheimer’s Society, the Teenage Cancer Trust and the Faculty of Public Health.
The coalition of medical experts added that while it welcomes the fact that the NHS has risen to the top of the political agenda, and some new spending commitments have been made, a “fully-costed, long-term spending plan” is needed in the future.
The letter highlighted that in social care families “continue to be crippled” by the cost of care, and thousands of elderly and vulnerable people are not getting the help they need and deserve just to live their daily lives safely and with dignity. Therefore, any future plans must take into account the need for “vital” social care.
It was also stated that a spending plan would also require a guarantee that the NHS will be “protected from another top-down reorganisation” which is not in the best interests of patients, and distracts from the severe, long-term funding pressures facing the health service.
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