Correct funding failures to protect NHS

NHS Providers has warned that worrying gaps in health spending must urgently be addressed in the forthcoming Comprehensive Spending Review.

In a speech to mark the launch of NHS Providers annual conference and exhibition, chief executive Chris Hopson said he despaired over the way politicians had treated social care and was worried that the NHS could face a similar fate, where funding failing to keep up with demand had pushed social care into crisis.

He warned that the government’s current five year funding commitment for the NHS had left important gaps on money for buildings, equipment and staff training, saying that since June 2018, when the announcement was first made, the NHS has had to deliver major new commitments from last December’s Conservative party General Election manifesto as well as meeting significant extra costs from coronavirus.

Speaking to hundreds of trust leaders from across England, Hopson warned the government against pretending that the health service could cope with these pressures. He said it was impossible to see how the NHS could deliver what was now expected of it on the current funding settlement.

Instead, he called on the government to revisit all three elements of NHS funding in the forthcoming CSR: the core ringfenced NHS budget; the capital spending budget, covering buildings and equipment; and the wider department of health and social care budget, including money for public health and NHS education and training.

Hopson said: “We elect our politicians to tackle the difficult issues. For two decades they have failed us deeply, consistently and unacceptably by promising to sort the crisis in social care and then failing to do so. Having driven social care into crisis by failing to fund it properly and sustainably, we must avoid driving the NHS into a similar fate. And we obviously need to rescue social care from its current state of crisis.”

Hopson said the health and care system had been through the most astonishing nine months in its history, meeting challenges head on. But he cautioned that there were clearly more trials, and possibly the most difficult days, ahead.