‘Hear me when I say this – no more money without reform.’ That was the Prime Minister’s message to the NHS only in September, when he promised the biggest reform of the health service since its founding.
But that’s not quite how it has panned out. Labour’s first Budget, which raised an additional £40 billion in tax, also announced an additional £22 billion for day-to-day spending within the NHS. Having allocated more than half of the tax rises to the health service, the promise from Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves was that improvements would be forthcoming. It’s not obvious, however, that the NHS agrees.
There is never a circumstance where enough resources have been allocated for the NHS to exist in any state but a crisis
The front page of today’s Times is a briefing – or warning – from NHS officials to the Labour party. Starmer is expected to announce in his ‘plan for change’ on Thursday that the NHS will finally meet its target of carrying out 92 per cent of operations within 18 weeks.
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