With the current occupant of Number 11 Downing Street set to unveil a ‘fiscal event’ at the end of this month is there much hope that the already battered finances of the NHS could emerge relatively unscathed?
As a former chair of the Commons health and social care committee, praised for pushing the government on NHS workforce planning issues, chancellor Jeremy Hunt should be sensitive to the impact of any new ‘efficiency savings’ imposed on the health service.
But Hunt assumed his latest role on the assumption that he’s prepared to take some “very difficult decisions” to lower government debt to below September’s record figure of £20bn. That hints at a return to the last decade’s austerity cuts to social care and the NHS which – according to research from York University – were linked to more than 57,000 extra deaths between 2010 and 2014. More recent statistics, from Glasgow University, suggest a much higher figure (almost 335,000 additional deaths between 2012 and 2019) is directly attributable to those Tory spending decisions.
The chancellor’s words have understandably triggered widespread alarm across the health sector, with leading figures such as NHS Confederation chief executive Matthew Taylor describing the prospect of further cuts as “incredibly grim”.
Full story in The Lowdown, 24 October 2022