This story was first published in digitalhealth.net
Tory MP pushes case for NHS spend referendum
A Conservative MP has said that his party should promise a referendum on raising NHS spending so the public can say how much more they are willing to pay for health services.
Robert Halfon, the MP for Harlow who sat in the cabinet under former Prime Minister David Cameron, said that the government should legislate for a public poll on NHS funding every 10 years to determine how much to increase spending on healthcare above inflation.
The former Party Deputy Chairman said that because there is an ‘umbilical cord between the public and the NHS’, ‘every user of the NHS should not only know what they are paying for, but how much it costs. A public guarentee would allow the public to be able ‘to decide how much they would increase funding beyond that real terms rise’, with more authority over how ‘many extra nurses, doctors, treatments, or hospitals their spending would buy’.
Halfon’s suggestion is the latest of a number of NHS-focused calls from within Prime Minister Theresa May’s party, following the much publicised calls from Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson to form a ‘Brexit dividend’, which would cater for an extra £100 million a week for the NHS in England after Brexit.
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