Additional Covid funding welcome, but may not be enough

In a statement to the House of Commons, which included an update on the supply of the AstraZeneca vaccine, health and social care secretary Matt Hancock said the government was supporting the NHS. ‘We’ve backed the NHS at every point in this pandemic, so it can treat patients, stay safe and save lives,’ he said.

Earlier this week, Mr Hancock assured the Commons Health and Social Care Committee that direct operational costs incurred in response to the pandemic would be met by the government.

NHS Providers had warned that without confirmation of budgets, the service would be forced to plan cuts of £7bn - £8bn over the first six months of 2021/22. Chief executive Chris Hopson (pictured) said trusts will be relieved that the budget for the first half of the year has been finalised.

But the funding is less than expected. ’We note that the £6.6bn for extra NHS Covid costs in the first half of 2021/22 is lower than the £8bn that the NHS’s Covid cost run rate during the past year would imply. We will want to see the details to assess whether all NHS additional Covid-19 costs are fully covered, and we will be seeking reassurances as we get towards the second half of 2021/22 that the NHS gets the money it needs to recover services.

‘It is extraordinary that this has been left to just 13 days before the beginning of the new financial year,’ he added.

‘As we have been publicly highlighting for weeks, trust leaders have been incredibly frustrated by delays over finalising NHS funding for 2021/22. This has disrupted planning for another tough year as trusts seek to deal with the backlog of care that has built up during the pandemic alongside the ongoing challenge from Covid-19. The last thing trust leaders needed was their attention being unnecessarily diverted from the urgent tasks in hand.’

In his statement, Mr Hancock (pictured) acknowledged that waiting lists had swollen to 4.6 million patients, but he believed this was an inevitable consequence of the pandemic.

He said that the £6.6bn would be in addition to the £3bn allocated in last November’s spending review to meet additional Covid costs and begin the work of recovering elective services. The spending review split the £3bn into £1bn to begin tackling the backlog of planned care, £500m to improve access to mental health services and £1.5bn to ease existing financial pressures.

However, Mr Hopson insisted additional Covid costs and the cost of the elective recovery should not be conflated. He said: 'We need to be absolutely clear that covering the NHS’s extra Covid costs and funding the multi-year cost of recovering care backlogs are completely different. The government announced an extra £3bn non-recurrent 2021/22 funding in last November’s spending review, £1bn of which was for recovering elective care and £500m of which was for extra mental health capacity.

‘This can only be seen as being the first instalment of payments to cover these costs, and crucially, it must be remembered that they are one-off funding just for this year.’

Mr Hancock also announced £341m to help adult social care with the costs of infection prevention to ensure safe visiting.