13 Apr 2015

NHS: Miliband refuses to sign up to ‘totemic’ £8bn increase

So Labour has once again refused to be lured into promising that now totemic £8bn extra for the NHS. In keeping with its pledge to be the party of fiscal responsibility, Ed Miliband said:  “You can’t fund the NHS with an IOU.”  In fact, he said pretty much the same thing five times in the space of seven sentences.

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Instead, he repeated his pledge from the party conference that there would be “8,000 more GPs, 20,000 more nurses and 3,000 more midwives, paid for by a mansion tax on properties worth over £2m, a levy on tobacco firms, and by tackling
tax avoidance”.

The tax on the properties will help, they say, raise the £2.5bn a year for an NHS time to care fund.

The £8bn is based on sums from Simon Stevens, head of NHS England, in his five year forward view that the health service will need an extra £30bn by the end of the decade and that while his plans could find £22bn, it still leaves a gap.

The Conservatives pledged to fund that extra £8bn at the weekend, leading to those fiscal irresponsibility claims from Mr Miliband.

The £8bn figure, though, is becoming increasingly arbitrary.  As the Health Foundation has pointed out, it is a minimum requirement if there is any hope of closing that funding gap.

And it is also based on the five year forward view proposals actually becoming a reality.  While admired as a plan for the NHS, it still requires an active commitment across the entire health service for it to work.

The chances are the £8bn being touted around this election will become many more billions by the next election.

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