Tough choices loom over NHS’ future
By politics.co.uk staff
Maintaining Labour and the Conservatives’ spending commitments on the NHS would force massive cuts in other departments, it has been claimed.
An analysis of the funding situation published today by the King’s Fund and the Institute for Fiscal Studies warns “very tough choices” will have to be made in the coming years.
It says over the next two comprehensive spending review periods, 2011/12 to 2016/17, even protecting the NHS with neutral real-terms spending growth would force cuts on other departments of around eight per cent.
This rises to 16 per cent if the parties continue to provide real-terms increases in funding averaging 2.5 per cent a year.
Such cuts could only be avoided by additional taxation. Limiting other departmental cuts to two per cent a year while freezing the NHS budget would require each family to pay an extra £340 – £10.6 billion in total.
The news comes as the DoH comes under unprecedented pressure over swine flu advice.
“Both the Labour and Conservative parties have pledged to avoid cutting NHS spending in real terms from 2011 but this will come at a big price – whether in departmental cuts elsewhere or tax hikes,” the King’s Fund’s chief economist John Appleby said.
“The NHS has enjoyed unprecedented increases in funding since the turn of the century but those days will soon be over.
“That’s why it’s crucial that the service does all it can over the next two years to prepare itself for the financial freeze that will take hold over the two coming spending review periods.”
Today’s report reveals the bleak outlook for the NHS, as compared with Sir Derek Wanless’ 2002 estimates of future funding needs.
He assumed improvements in health-related lifestyle behaviour and increased productivity, but the funding scenarios envisaged by today’s analysis fall short of his mid-range projections.
