Yesterday saw chancellor Rachel Reeves make a spate of NHS funding announcements, with the extra £22bn in day-to-day health budget coming as the major news.
Other headline announcements include:
- £3.1bn increase in the capital budget for the next two years
- £1bn to tackle RAAC and the backlog of repairs
- £1.5bn for new surgical hubs and diagnostic scanners
NHS reaction
NHS Providers’ deputy CEO, Saffron Cordery, described the news as a welcome boost for trust leaders.
She added that health chiefs will make the most out of every pound but there must be realism on the rate of progress achievable.
"The devil is often in the detail and it will be critical to ensure that welcome funding increases fall where they are needed, including to bring down waits for mental health and community services and to improve ambulance performance.”
NHS Confederation CEO Matthew Taylor, meanwhile, dubbed the budget an important first step towards sustainability.
According to Taylor, the investment has much to do, however, as it will need to cover:
- already agreed pay deals;
- growing demand;
- performance recovery; and
- local service transformation.
He said: "We will need to look at the detail to see how much funding will be for new investments compared to funding existing commitments such as existing pay deals, but £3.1bn of additional capital funding will be pivotal for boosting productivity through repairing crumbling estates, replacing out-of-date equipment and rolling out the latest digital technology.”
Further spending increases are hoped for at the next spending review and within the 10-year plan.
Think tank reaction
The chancellor’s long-term approach has been welcomed by the Health Foundation’s CEO, Dr Jennifer Dixon – it is very much a budget of stability rather than transformation, though.
The Health Foundation generally welcomes the moves to get people back into the labour market and therefore boost the economy, but awaits further details which are to be released in a forthcoming government white paper.
While the £600m for social care and reforms to the Carers Allowance are a positive step, the silence on wider sector reforms is disappointing, according to Dr Dixon.
The King’s Fund, meanwhile, has emphasised that the widespread change needed across the health sector will not be brought by this budget – this is for similar reasons outlined earlier by the NHS Confederation.
Like others before him, the think tank’s chief analyst, Siva Anandaciva, believes this budget to be a stepping stone towards wider change, with more to surely come in the new year – from both the comprehensive spending review and the 10-year plan.
“On the whole, this budget has been a starting point for the investment and reform that is needed to begin to stabilise the trajectory of NHS performance, but it is not enough for the system to deliver the wholesale shift needed for a health and care system fit for the future.”
The Nuffield Trust’s research and policy director, Becks Fisher, similarly echoed the idea that while the funding will help in the immediate term, it will not catalyse sweeping reform.
As previously mentioned, the consensus is that this budget signals a first step towards change – that is if you take the government’s ambitions at face value.
More funding will be required to initiate the government’s three shifts and if the Department of Health and Social Care truly wants to move care away from hospitals and into the community, the funding must do so too.
Finally, on social care, Fisher said: “It is disappointing that today’s Budget does little to stabilise the beleaguered social care sector in the immediate term, and that the supporting rhetoric made no mention at all of the future reform it so desperately needs.”
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