An inquiry has said that spending on the NHS, social care and public health needs to rise by £102 billion over the next decade to improve Britain’s health in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
According to a four-year commission of inquiry by the London School of Economics and the Lancet medical journal, the necessary funding would come largely from increases in income tax, national insurance and VAT, which evidence suggests the public is willing to pay.
The health experts claims that the investment would cut avoidable deaths from cancer and heart disease, tackle glaring health inequalities and rebuild the NHS after Covid exposed weaknesses such as a lack of beds and staff.
The Commission, formed in 2017, brings together 33 leading research, policy, management, and clinical experts from the four constituent countries of the UK. Collectively they argue that the government must seize on the pandemic as an opportunity to transform the NHS, social care and public health so that they can drive much-needed improvements to the nation’s health, which still lags behind that in many other high-income countries in key respects.
For UK spending in those three areas combined to increase dramatically from £185 billion today to £288 billion by 2030/31, every sector would be getting a four per cent budget uplift for each of the next 10 years. Under their plans, the NHS budget across the four home nations would soar from £162 billion to £239 billion.
Dr Michael Anderson of the LSE, said: “Without concerted action and increased funding we risk the UK falling further behind other high-income countries in health outcomes and life expectancy, continued deterioration in service provision and worsening inequalities, increased reliance on private funding and an NHS that is poorly equipped to respond to future major threats to health.”
The report also warns Prime Minister Boris Johnson to drop his planned reorganisation of the NHS in England, which is expected feature in next week’s Queen’s speech, which it said will be disruptive and bring no benefits, as well as urges ministers and the NHS to ramp up efforts to stop people succumbing to preventable illnesses in the first place by cracking down on smoking, drinking and poor diet.
