The NHS has been warned it is “drinking in the last chance saloon” and must end its culture of asking for more money, by Labour’s top health advisor.
In the Budget, Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced what she called the biggest real-terms increase in day-to-day NHS spending since 2010 – outside the Covid pandemic – providing £22.6 billion for the health service along with another £3.1 billion of capital investment.
Alan Milburn, former secretary of state for health who had success slashing waiting times under Tony Blair, will return in a role as Wes Streeting’s key adviser on reform, making him lead non-executive director of the Department of Health.
He told The Times: “The NHS is in the worst state I’ve ever seen and I’ve been around health policy now for 30 years. I genuinely think it’s drinking in the last-chance saloon.”
“Keir [Starmer] has got religion on public-service reform,” Milburn said.
“He knows that … when you put that amount of money in, you better make sure that every pound of it is working to produce better outcomes for patients.”
It came as a BBC investigation found senior consultants earning the most were more likely to be part-time, which means they can work overtime for rates of £200 an hour - more than four times normal pay.
The BBC found that Medway NHS Foundation Trust paid one radiologist more than £200,000 - almost twice the average basic pay for a full-time consultant in England.
Mr Milburn called for a “culture of change” in the health service, adding: “People have got to stop thinking that the answer to the NHS problem is simply more and more money.”
Mr Streeting is expected to announce “tough reforms to the way the NHS is run” next week to make sure every extra pound set out in the Budget is well spent.
Mr Milburn said the current health secretary would go “further and faster” than New Labour had, adding: “The NHS has got to be weaned off the ‘more, more, more’ culture, and it’s got to recognise that if you’re going to do big dollops of resources, then that has got to be matched by a massive dose of reform.”
He added the United Kingdom needed “a Dunkirk-spirit moment for the NHS, where the whole nation pulls together”.
