Labour pledges extra funding in NHS ‘rescue plan’

Under plans unveiled today, the Department of Health and Social Care budget would increase to £178bn by 2023/24 – an annual average increase of 4.3%. The long-term average spending increase for the NHS is around 4%.

The funding is expected to come from higher corporation tax and taxes on the wealthiest individuals.

As part of the growth in health spending, the NHS England resource budget would rise to £154.9bn by 2023/24 – the party said this was a real-terms increase of £26bn for day-to-day spending. Last year. the Conservatives agreed a five-year funding settlement that will increase the NHS England budget by £20.5bn in real terms by 2023/24.

Mental healthcare would be given a greater priority under a Labour government, with an extra £1.6bn a year for services to come from the additional NHS England funding.

There would also be free prescriptions and car parking, but the cost of these are not included in Labour’s figures.

By the end of the Parliament, capital budgets would increase by £15bn over five years, to take spending to £10bn by 2023/24. There would be a focus on rebuilding hospitals and community facilities, and clearing the maintenance backlog.

A £2bn mental health infrastructure fund would abolish dormitory wards and invest in more beds to end out-of-area placements and a new fleet of crisis ambulances. There would be a £2.5bn fund to overhaul the primary care estate and £1.5bn would be earmarked for increase the number of CT and MRI scanners to the OECD average.

The nursing bursary would be restored and an additional 24,000 nurses recruited. GP training places would be expanded to 5,000.

Labour also promised to increase public health spending by £1bn, which would include funds targeted at obesity and addiction, as well as the recruitment of an extra 4,800 health visitors and school nurses.

The Conservatives have pledged to recruit an extra 6,000 GPs, but there are no details on the party’s planned funding for public health and training yet. Boris Johnson’s government promised a substantial hospital building and refurbishment programme – announcing funding for six projects together with seed funding for 21 other trusts – under a five-year rolling programme of investment.

Shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth said: ‘We are announcing today the levels of investment our NHS needs to not only again provide the quality care our sick and elderly deserve but secures the NHS for the future as well. We’ll invest more to prevent people becoming ill in the first place and we’ll give mental health and wellbeing a greater priority than ever before.

‘This general election is about millions on waiting lists and hundreds of thousands who’ve waited on trolleys under the Tories – only Labour has a plan to rescue our NHS.’

King’s Fund chief executive Richard Murray welcomed the Labour promise of additional funding, particularly as it covered not only day-to-day NHS running costs, but other vital areas of health spending.

He added: ‘There are various options for raising the funds to increase health and care spending. Latest data from the British Social Attitudes Survey showed that the public are willing to pay for an NHS funding boost. Nearly six in 10 respondents said that if the NHS needed more money, they would be willing to accept an increase in taxes to fund it.’

However, he said the success of any funding policy depended on the ability to recruit and retain sufficient numbers of staff. Labour’s announcement on the nursing bursary was welcome, but it was also crucial to focus on retaining current staff.

Mr Murray added that a key test for all parties would be whether they include plans for fundamental reform of social care funding in their manifestos.