Labour Health Budget Plan Nowhere Near Enough
The SNP has reiterated its call that the Chancellor to deliver at least £16 billion a year of additional funding for the NHS, after experts warned the Labour government’s leaked UK budget plans do not go far enough.
It comes after sources told The Independent that the Department for Health and Social Care is expecting to get a settlement of around 4% – between £7bn and £8bn. Experts have warned this would be “a stand still settlement” for the NHS following years of Westminster underfunding and the cost of pay deals, inflation, COVID backlogs and Brexit.
The British Medical Association (BMA) has called for a minimum of £13 billion extra a year. Meanwhile, Deputy Chief Executive of NHS Providers, Saffron Cordery, has warned of a “near £14 billion maintenance backlog” and the recent NHS report by Lord Darzi concluded “there is a shortfall of £37 billion of capital investment” and that “these missing billions are what would have been invested if the NHS had matched peer countries’ levels of capital investment in the 2010s“.
It follows new research, conducted by the House of Commons Library and published by the SNP earlier this month, which found the UK Government spends less on healthcare per capita than almost every other country in north west Europe – and has done for every year of the 21st century.
The SNP will additionally present a Bill today to keep the NHS in public hands, after the Labour Government Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, made repeated threats to open up the NHS to the private sector.
Mr Streeting said he would “hold the door wide open” to private healthcare firms, while it was revealed the Labour Party accepted millions in donations from a hedge fund linked to private healthcare interests. Amid Labour’s freebie scandal, it was disclosed that Mr Streeting personally raked in £175,000 from a donor also linked to private health care.
At the start of the general election campaign, Streeting promised in the Telegraph that a Labour government “will go further than New Labour ever did – that he wants “the NHS to form partnerships with the private sector that goes beyond just hospitals”. And private healthcare investors previously said the Labour Party would “kick-start private sector investment much more proactively than the Tories were able to do”.
As part of their manifesto, the SNP made a commitment to moving a Bill to prevent the NHS being sold off by the Labour Government to foreign private healthcare firms. The Bill will explicitly stop any UK government undermining the principles and protections of the NHS as part of any future trade deals.
SNP Health spokesperson, Seamus Logan MP, will present the Bill to parliament and has invited MPs to support it.
It would seem the Labour UK Government plans to continue Westminster’s chronic underfunding of the NHS, which has done so much damage over the past fourteen years, much as it is continuing with Tory austerity across other policy areas.
GRAEME
The comparative numbers from the rest of Western Europe is damning, and the leaked figure of £8 billion a year is nowhere near enough to address the serious and wide-ranging challenges facing our health system.
But the answer is not reckless moves towards privatisation – our NHS must remain in public hands, not “wide open” to foreign private healthcare interests.
The SNP’s Bill is about fighting this – standing by the founding principles of the NHS
Background
Text of motion: “Bill to exclude requirements relating to National Health Services procurement, delivery or commissioning from international trade agreements; to require the consent of the House of Commons and the devolved legislatures to international trade agreements insofar as they relate to the National Health Services of England, Scotland and Wales and Health and Social Care in Northern Ireland; and for connected purposes.”
https://commonsbusiness.parliament.uk/Document/89188/Pdf?subType=Standard
