Funding needed to deliver Labour’s ambitious health plans

Labour leader Keir Starmer (pictured) set out the party’s 10-year plan to create an NHS fit for the future in a speech on Monday. He said the service needed three major changes, which Labour would deliver if it won the next general election.

More care needed to be delivered in people’s homes, with better access to primary care and improvements to what an accompanying briefing described as ‘an inadequate and neglected social care system’. Workforce shortages needed to be addressed, with technology taking some of the strain off staff. And there needed to be a major shift in focus towards prevention.

It promised to return the service to a point where it was achieving all relevant waiting time standards and to target three of the country’s biggest killers: cancer; cardiovascular disease; and suicide.

‘Some people will tell you this is purely a question of money,’ he said. ‘And money is part of it – I don’t deny that.’ He gave no details on what a Labour government might be prepared to spend on health, promising only that he knew that ‘money makes a difference’. But he said the service also needed ‘serious, deep, long-term changes’ to make it sustainable.

Detailed decisions about funding would be taken nearer the time – based on a ‘full appreciation’ of the state of the NHS and the public finances. More important right now was for the party to show its ‘recipe for reform, to put forward a vision of a renewed NHS that can make the most of the money we invest in it’.

Nuffield Trust chief executive Nigel Edwards said the Labour leader was right to focus on prevention and tackling the major conditions. But he said the proposals were both ‘welcome’ and ‘extremely ambitious’. ‘Delivering them will require time, staff and more long-term funding than Labour have so far pledged,’ he said.

Poor outcomes and spiralling waits for care could not be fixed quickly and had been ‘years if not decades’ in the making, caused in part by ‘woeful underinvestment’ in NHS buildings and equipment and an inability to reform social care. ‘To succeed on these pledges, the Labour party will need to put more money than planned into the NHS, solve the growing crisis of recruitment and retention to health and social care roles, and act swiftly to shore up the crumbling NHS buildings and inadequate equipment, which are holding back progress,’ he said.

Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said that Labour’s ambitions were sensible and would be good news for patients and staff if they were achieved. He highlighted the focus on prevention and health inequalities and pointed out that the confederation had long argued for care to be moved more into the community. ‘However, we need to understand how Labour would achieve – and fund – such a move,’ he said. ‘We also need to see details of plans for social care, as this is the flip side of the coin and should go hand in hand with efforts to move towards greater community care.’

He also said there was a clear need for investment. ‘While it is correct that improvement isn’t all about money, years of underinvestment mean that money is a hugely significant barrier to improvement, and we need to see specifics on what a boost to funding would look like,’ he added.

Although the accompanying briefing said the NHS ‘can’t go on with a crumbling estate’ it indicated there would be a review of capital projects. This would ‘make sure money is getting allocated efficiently, that we are eliminating waste, and that we are prioritising the projects that will get the patients the care they deserve faster’.