Yesterday, Chancellor Rachel Reeves gave her Spring Statement, setting out the current state of the nation’s economy and public finances. Alongside this, Reeves also outlined the measures that the government would be taking to reduce costs and boost the economy.
These measures include cuts to welfare, and improvements to the way that the NHS is funded to ensure reduced deficits and better productivity. With the statement commended to the house, the health sector began to respond to the announcements.
Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive of the NHS Confederation, responded with the following statement:
“The government has had to make some very difficult decisions due to the precarious state of public finances. We understand the need to stabilise public finances in the short-term and that this will require cost-cutting measures across government departments as well as the NHS.
“Our members will work with the government and NHS England to do everything possible to reduce the NHS deficit and improve productivity. We all recognise that health budgets have been protected compared to other departments. But the abolition of NHS England and proposed running cost cuts to integrated care boards are coming at a very challenging time with services struggling to recover performance and begin to work towards the government’s three shifts.
“The reality is that these cuts will require major changes and they will inevitably make the task of delivering long-term transformation of the NHS much harder. Much of trust and ICS leaders’ focus will need to go on stabilising the NHS in the short term as they prioritise patient care, but we also need to ensure we get the right balance between recovery and reform given the opportunity provided by the upcoming ten-year plan. The danger is that we go too far and leave little to no capacity to deliver this long-term transformation.
“Our members have told us that capital funding is going to be vital for improving productivity and cutting waiting lists. Our recent discussion paper concluded that ministers are likely to need several options to raise capital, including shared investment models with private capital. Private finance could free up public capital to concentrate on tackling the urgent repairs needed to drive down the NHS’s £13.8 billion maintenance backlog.”
Taylor also went on to welcome the commitment to getting people back into work, and confirmed that the NHS Confederation’s analysis has shown that getting a significant number of people that have dropped out of work due to ill-health back into work will give a major boost to the nation’s GDP.
With the government planning to reduce disability and incapacity benefits and eligibility, there have already been warnings that this could bring significant risks of worsening mental health, as well as the chance of more people being driven into poverty.
Centre for Mental Health Chief Executive, Andy Bell, said:
“Our social security system was created as a safety net for citizens who are unable to work or who are living with a disability. Today’s announcement of further cuts to both Personal Independence Payment (PIP) and Universal Credit may have a devastating impact on those who lose out and face deeper poverty.
“Restricting eligibility for PIP and freezing the health element of Universal Credit will do nothing to help people get into work. They are more likely to make people more ill, more isolated, and less able to work. For many people living with long-term mental health problems, PIP is what enables them to carry on working. Taking it away will make that harder, and could see more people lose their jobs.
“The Government’s analysis indicates that over three million families will be worse off financially as a result of these plans. We know that poverty has a damaging impact on children’s mental health, causing ill-health which can last a lifetime.
“We welcome the Government’s investments to provide better support for disabled people who want to find paid work. Evidence-based employment support can improve people’s standard of living and boost their mental health. However, reducing social security payments will undermine these efforts.”
Despite the difficult choices that need to be made in order to bring improvements to the economy, one thing that was not mentioned by the Chancellor was social care. Addressing the statement, and the absence of social care, Health Foundation Chief Executive Dame Jennifer Dixon commented:
"The fiscal outlook requires difficult choices, but the decisions taken in today’s Spring Statement will hit some of the most vulnerable people the hardest and risk damaging the nation's health and future prosperity.
“Reforms to the welfare system include proposals to cut and freeze the health element of Universal Credit and restrict eligibility for Personal Independence Payments. The government’s own impact assessment projects that this will leave 3.2m families worse off and 250,000 more people in relative poverty by 2029/30, which can further erode their health and ability to work.
“It is important to support more people to stay in work and reduce economic inactivity through fundamental reforms to improve health. Welcome measures in last week's welfare reform green paper aiming to prevent people from being forced to leave employment due to ill health risk being undermined by cuts to benefits that will leave many people worse off, in worse health and less able to return to work.
“On the NHS, the Chancellor highlighted improvements in reducing waiting lists. The focus now shifts to the Spending Review and the long-term reforms that will be set out in the forthcoming 10-year-Health Plan. However, swingeing cuts to NHS bodies, including the abolition of NHS England, will cause huge disruption at a critical point. It’s not too late for the government to step back from the brink and find a less disruptive way of achieving their objectives than embarking on a distracting top-down reorganisation of the NHS.
‘Social care was notable by its absence from the Chancellor’s speech. It is deeply disappointing that calls to support the sector with the additional costs of increases in National Insurance contributions and the National Minimum Wage have largely been ignored. This will heap further pressure on a struggling sector and risks reducing people's access to publicly funded care. The Social Care Commission’s work to develop a long term plan for reforming social care cannot come soon enough.”
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