Extra £38bn a year needed by 2029-30 to ‘revive’ NHS, says think-tank

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An extra £38bn a year will be needed by 2029-30 to “revive” England’s health system, according to think-tank research, prompting analysts to say political parties’ pledges are “falling far short”.

Healthcare spending would need to grow 3.8 per cent in real terms over the next decade compared to a planned 0.8 per cent “to meet rising care needs and deliver significant improvements”, the Health Foundation said on Thursday.

The health service has become a key political battleground in the run-up to the general election on July 4, with NHS leaders calling for an urgent cash injection to improve care and reduce waiting lists.

“Politicians need to be honest with the public about the scale of the challenge the NHS faces and the reality that an NHS fit for the future needs long-term sustainable investment,” said Anita Charlesworth, director of research at the think-tank.

“The health service is in crisis and all the main political parties have said they want to fix it — yet the funding they have so far promised falls well short of the level needed to make improvements,” she added.

The Health Foundation calculated that the health budget would need to grow by 4.5 per cent above inflation per year over the next five years as the NHS recovers from the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. This would then fall to 3.8 per cent over the following five years.

The total investment needed added up to £38bn in 2029-30, on top of the £8bn of funding growth already expected that year if the health budget continues to grow in line with current estimates.

The analysis was based on recent projections of public spending in the next parliament by the Office for Budget Responsibility, the independent fiscal watchdog.

The think-tank calculated that government funding for healthcare would increase by 0.8 per cent a year, assuming that day-to-day spending increased by 1 per cent, and cash spending held steady.

Holding spending at this level would result in a £197bn annual budget for the Department of Health by 2029-30, which the think-tank said would amount to a £38bn shortfall in the funding required to “revive” health services.

The think-tank said reviving the NHS constituted a “sustained improvement” in services and considered factors such as productivity, recovery of backlogs and investment in out of hospital care.

They said the additional £38bn funding would “be enough to tackle waiting times for care over a 10-year period, prioritise prevention and invest more in primary, mental health and community care”.

The Nuffield Trust, a health think-tank, said last week that the Conservative and Labour pledges would “result in the next four years being the tightest in NHS history . . . tighter even than the coalition government’s ‘austerity’ period”.

A Conservative spokesperson said: “We will continue to increase NHS funding above inflation across the next parliament to train and recruit 92,000 more nurses and 28,000 doctors through our long-term workforce plan.

“We will deliver millions more scans, tests and checks as we cut waiting lists and deliver better care for patients,” they added.

Labour did not respond to a request for comment.

The party has pledged £2bn to fund an additional 40,000 routine hospital appointments a week, to double the number of scanners in hospitals, and create 700,000 emergency dental appointments.