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Jeremy Hunt took a political gamble on Wednesday when he allocated no extra funding for NHS England in the Autumn Statement, according to health leaders, as the service heads into one of the toughest winters on record.
NHS chiefs have warned of a crisis in the service, calling for an urgent cash injection as a wave of strikes by health workers since December 2022 has compounded the funding pressures facing the sector.
Dr Layla McCay, NHS Confederation director of policy, described the statement as a “missed opportunity”, adding: “Given public opinion polling shows the NHS is in the top two issues of concern as we head into an election year, it’s a gamble not to fully address the size of the funding gap facing the NHS.”
The state of the health service will be a political battleground for the Labour and the Conservative parties in the run-up to the general election expected next year.
Hunt rejected calls this month for £1bn in extra funding for the health service. Instead, the government said it was giving NHS trusts, an organisational unit of different health services, £800mn to help prepare for the winter.
The funding included £200mn announced in September, £500mn from existing budgets and £100mn of new money from the Treasury.
NHS England has been forced to retreat from its ambition of focusing on all patients awaiting elective care and trusts have been encouraged to devote resources to “high-priority” cases.
Industrial action by doctors, nurses and other staff has led to the cancellation of about 1.2mn operations and appointments. However, even before the strikes started, the NHS was struggling to mitigate the effect of high inflation on its budget.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said one of his five “people’s priorities” is for waiting lists for non-urgent care to be falling by the election. But the backlog has risen in recent months, with official figures showing a record 7.75mn patients waiting for treatment.
Sunak and Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer traded blows over the state of the NHS during prime minister’s questions on Wednesday. Sunak said he was doing “an enormous amount” to try to bring down NHS waiting lists.
Starmer pointed to the latest waiting list figures. “The prime minister would not accept those waits for his family and nor would anyone else,” he said.
Professor Nicola Ranger, chief nurse at the Royal College of Nursing, warned that the health service needed “an urgent cash injection” but instead had been “entirely forgotten” in the Autumn Statement.
Philip Banfield, chair of the British Medical Association’s ruling council, said: “On the eve of an incredibly difficult winter, and with three groups of doctors in England still in dispute with the government over pay, the complete absence of any commitments to health is astonishing.”
