Winter is coming, as it always does, and the NHS creaks and groans. The chancellor will not tomorrow hand over the £1bn it needs to cover the cost of strikes, though NHS debts mount while almost 7.8 million people in England suffer on waiting lists.
But Jeremy Hunt will have an easy riposte, hot ammunition to hurl at the NHS, rehearsing for the upcoming election. A spate of alarming reports all say the same thing: NHS productivity has fallen since the pandemic, with more money and more staff treating fewer hospital patients. So says the authoritative Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), parliament’s public accounts committee and the House of Commons library. Here’s what the chancellor can say: in the last five years the NHS has had more money and some 20% more doctors and nurses, yet it treats fewer hospital patients than pre-Covid. Forget asking for more.
