Keir Starmer must abandon plans to delay investment in the NHS and instead use new taxes on banks and the wealthy to immediately plough almost £5bn a year into the ailing health service, the leader of the Lib Dems has warned.
In an interview with the Observer as the Lib Dem conference takes place in Brighton, Ed Davey said that the forthcoming budget must be squarely a “budget for the NHS”. He warned that waiting to begin the work needed to repair ageing hospitals and increase GP numbers was a serious mistake.
“We’ve got crumbling hospitals,” he said. “We don’t have enough GPs and dentists. Social care is in a mess. Carers aren’t getting support. We need that budget for the NHS. Yes, we agree there needs to be reform, but you can’t do reform without more investment upfront. We will spend a lot of time talking about the NHS. The budget should be a budget for the NHS, above all.”
It comes after Starmer warned last week that the NHS had to “reform or die”, following the publication of a damning report into the health service’s condition in England by the cancer surgeon and former minister Ara Darzi. The prime minister suggested there would be “no more money without reform”.
He conceded that the service was now in a critical condition and that he was willing to face down “loud opposition” to major reforms. However, Davey said that while he was attempting to be constructive with the new government, waiting to invest was a major error.
“That’s the key thing where I think we do differ from what the government’s been saying,” he said. “We’ve been advocating reform, particularly around care. But the government seems to be saying: ‘You do reform first and then you invest.’ I just don’t think that’s possible. You’ve got to invest now, otherwise we won’t have an NHS.
“The NHS can’t wait any longer. Take day-to-day spending. That means you’re going to need more GPs. You’re going to need spending on care, dentists and the like. On capital spend, the backlog of repairs and maintenance in NHS England has nearly doubled since 2015. It’s a crisis.”
He claimed that last year 13.5 million people were admitted to NHS trusts that had sites where buildings were crumbling or were deemed to be high risk from maintenance issues.
“Let’s see what they do in the budget. I’m willing to wait until 30 October, but we are putting down a marker,” he said. “The budget needs to be a budget for the NHS and care.”
The Lib Dems are standing by a pre-election demand for an extra £3.7bn a year in day-to-day NHS spending by the end of the parliament, as well as an extra £1.1bn a year of capital investment in hospitals for 10 years. Davey said it should be paid for by adjusting the rates of capital gains tax, raising £5.2bn a year, and restoring the bank surcharge and bank levy revenues to 2016 levels in real terms. This is forecast to raise £4.3bn.
He warned that the sombre tone struck by Starmer since taking office was unnecessarily negative and said his party would attempt to inject a more positive vision for the country, adding: “There’s a danger that they’re all doom and gloom, and it can’t be done, and you’ve got to wait, and it’s all too difficult. We’ve got to make these cuts.
“Well, I actually think one could be much more optimistic and hopeful about the future. There’s a real return from investing now – an invest-to-save notion where you get people back to work, you boost the economy.
“We’ve talked about capital gains tax. We had very detailed reform proposals to raise significant amounts from the very wealthy, the billionaires, as well as the banks, the social media giants and some of the oil and gas companies. So I think it’s fair to say we’ve set out quite a big agenda.”
He said that despite a strong election result that saw the Lib Dems return 72 MPs, many in traditionally Tory seats, he wanted to “finish the job” and take even more Conservative areas next time.
“If we can show that there’s hope and optimism about our approach, that will show that, essentially, we’re a better opposition than the Conservatives,” he said.
“If we do that, we’ll not only hold on to our 72 seats that we’ve now got but also I think we can finish the job. We took down a lot of the blue wall. I want to take the whole of it down. I think we can win more Conservative seats at the next election.”
