If Andy Burnham moves from Manchester to No 10, he will be the first prime minister to have been health secretary in the history of the NHS. What might that mean for the troubled service? His commitment to social care is well known. But when the Treasury tells him there is no money, he is going to have to think hard about how to make his mark.
The UK now spends the fifth most of any OECD economy when it comes to government health spending as a proportion of GDP. That’s why health service insiders no longer say the issue is money but productivity. They have been puzzling over why, since 2020, the total number of staff across NHS England has grown by 20% but activity has only gone up by 10%. That’s part of the reason why waiting lists have remained stubbornly high and a significant part of the progress made in reducing them has come from “list cleaning” – removing people from lists who no longer need treatment – rather than actual increases in activity.
