News / Re-run Wanless reviews, King’s Fund urges

Regular Wanless-style reviews of health and social care spending pressures should be commissioned to inform debate about spending decisions, according to a King’s Fund report.

The report, Spending on health and social care over the next 50 years: why think long term?, suggests current spending on health and social care of about 9% of gross domestic product could more than double to nearly 20% by 2061.

Based on projections for economic growth and current levels of taxation and government expenditure, this would translate to 50% of public spending, the report says.

King’s Fund chief economist John Appleby (pictured) pointed out that continuing rises in spending were not inevitable. ‘It is time to think much more long term about how much we should spend, the benefits of this spending and how it should be paid for,’ he said.

The report acknowledged that annual projections produced by the Office for Budget Responsibility were ‘a very useful high-level view of possible futures’, but called for occasional more detailed investigations, possibly every five years, along the lines of the 2002 analysis overseen by Sir Derek Wanless. ‘This could explore more detailed projections at, for example, a disease level,’ said the report.

NHS Confederation chief executive Mike Farrar backed the need for debate. ‘It is essential we have open and honest conversations with the public about what we can afford in the future and how we will fund it,’ he said.