Chancellor Rachel Reeves has announced an extra £22.6 billion in day-to-day spending for the NHS in Wednesday’s budget in a significant boost to the health service.
The news will come as further relief to NHS managers following the settlement of the junior doctors pay dispute earlier this year.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting may have spent the week promising that the Budget will not fix the NHS “overnight”, but he will know that such a significant cash injection must be matched by delivery.
The Standard breaks down the key announcements for the NHS – and what it means for hospitals and patients.
A huge overall funding boost
The headline announcement is that the NHS will receive an extra £22.6 billion in funding for 2023/24 and 2025/26.
This would represent a real-terms growth in spending of 4 per cent, the highest since before 2010 when Covid funding is excluded.
Ms Reeves said the money would help Labour make good on its promise to deliver an extra 40,000 NHS appointments, a pledge which is key to reducing the elective backlog.
A total of £1.5 billion will also be invested in new capacity for diagnostic tests, surgical hubs and diagnostic centres to help end long waits for diagnosis.
The latest performance figures for the NHS in England show that 282,664 people had been waiting more than a year to start routine hospital treatment at the end of August.
An extra £3.1 billion for Britain’s crumbling hospitals and the backlog
Health leaders have welcomed the announcement that an extra £3.1 billion will be available for capital funding, which includes NHS infrastructure.
Of this, more than £1 billion will be available for essential maintenance, repairs and upgrades across the NHS estate. The priority will be upgrades to NHS sites where unsafe reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) has been discovered.
In the past decade, hospital leaders have warned that patient care has been affected by leaking roofs, mould and out-of-date equipment.
But health bosses have cautioned that the investment may only scratch the surface.
Saffron Cordery, deputy chief executive of NHS Providers, which represents healthcare bosses, said that almost £14 billion would be needed to “plug a rocketing backlog of NHS repairs”.
“Vital bits of the NHS are literally falling apart, putting quality of care and sometimes the safety of patients and staff at risk,” she said.
Billions in compensation for infected blood scandal victims
Some £11.8 billion of funding will be set aside to compensate the victims of the infected blood scandal, the biggest treatment scandal in NHS history.
More than 30,000 NHS patients were given blood products contaminated with HIV or hepatitis C between the 1970s and the early 1990s.
The scandal has not only led to thousands of deaths, but long-term impacts on the lives of those affected and their families.
The news will come as a relief to families, who have seen their calls for compensation ignored by successive governments.
Social care funding ‘substantially less’ than NHS
Perhaps the biggest omission from Ms Reeves’ budget is a plan for social care – a sector in dire need of reform.
The Treasury has promised £1.3 billion for local Government, which includes £600 million for social care.
Fixing social care is key to improving the performance of hospitals, as many beds in winter are taken up by elderly or frail patients who have no social care package to be discharged into. These bed shortages cause long delays in A&E.
Siva Anandaciva, chief analyst at the King’s Fund, said: “The additional £600m announced for social care will be welcomed by the sector but is substantially less than what has been allocated to the NHS – many social care leaders will look on with envy at the funding their health service colleagues have received.
“Care providers will also have to shoulder extra employer costs from national insurance changes and minimum wage increases, exacerbating the difficult financial position they are in.”
