‘The NHS needs Keir Starmer to use his huge majority to do whatever it takes, and that begins with telling the truth about the huge investment needed to save it’
Ellie Chowns is the Green Party MP for North Herefordshire
News of a potential pay agreement between junior doctors and the government is very welcome, and a huge achievement for Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, just a few weeks into the job. But with the Chancellor of the Exchequer announcing a £22bn “black hole” in the public finances, and the National Audit Office warning about an NHS near financial ruin, there are serious questions about how Labour will approach the thorny issue of NHS funding off the back of fourteen years of Conservative failure.
The National Audit Office’s report on the NHS, published last week, paints a grim picture of the health service Labour has inherited from the Conservatives. NHS trusts are drowning in deficits, with a staggering £1.4 billion shortfall this year alone. The backlog of repairs has hit £11.6 billion, with over £2 billion of that deemed ‘high risk’. This isn’t just about the huge fallout of the fourteen years of Conservative mismanagement – it’s about patient safety, care quality, and the very survival of the NHS.
Let’s be clear about what this means in real terms. It’s about cancer patients waiting months for treatment. It’s about ambulances taking hours to reach emergency calls. It’s about dedicated NHS staff burning out and quitting because they’re constantly asked to do more with less.
The NAO warns that without significant investment, things will only get worse. They project that by 2036, we’ll need an extra 29,000 hospital beds just to keep pace with demand. That’s not accounting for any improvements in care, or any plans to reduce waiting times – it’s the bare minimum to stop the system collapsing under the weight of demand.
Against this backdrop, you’d expect the new Labour government to be offering bold solutions and increased funding. But there lies the problem for the NHS – Labour’s manifesto refused to face up to the scale of fourteen years of Conservative failure, and therefore Labour MPs will have their hands tied or face disciplinary action, as happened in last week’s vote on the two-child benefits cap.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies pointed out huge voids in Labour’s manifesto spending promises. They identified that Labour’s spending plans left “literally no room” for anything beyond what the previous Conservative government had already budgeted. The Labour government is now implementing a manifesto that promised less than 1% increase in NHS funding over five years: a real terms spending cut. That’s right – the party that claimed to be the NHS’s greatest champion is now planning to continue the Conservative underinvestment that’s brought our health service to its knees.
Let that sink in. Labour MPs will now be expected to vote in accordance with a manifesto that the IFS says requires real terms spending cuts and can’t possibly deliver on their NHS promises. Last week’s crackdown on dissenting MPs could only be the first of many when the honeymoon period wears off and Labour MPs are forced to reckon with the “tough decisions” made necessary by wedding themselves to the Conservatives “fiscal rules”.
How do they square this circle? The IFS was blunt: either we’ll get real terms cuts, or Labour will fudge their fiscal targets, or taxes will rise. But Labour wouldn’t admit to any of this. Today is the day of reckoning, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer announces a raft of spending cuts, and rolls the pitch for an October budget which will undoubtedly have to introduce tax changes.
We Greens have a different approach. We’re not afraid to be honest about what it’ll take to save our NHS. Our manifesto argued for an extra £8 billion a year, rising to £28 billion by 2030. These figures are based on what healthcare experts say is needed to fill the black hole in health budgets.
Yes, this will mean asking those with the broadest shoulders to pay more, with policies such as a wealth tax and taxing investment income at the same rate as earned wages. But this is widely popular. People recognise that our country is too unequal; and people recognise that this investment is needed for shorter waiting times, better equipped hospitals, and staff who aren’t run ragged.
This isn’t radical thinking or pie in the sky – it’s common sense. And I know it’s what many people across Britain – regardless of how they’ve voted in the past – are crying out for.
We’re also clear that we need fresh thinking on health and social care. Just spending more money on doing the same things isn’t enough. We need smart investments in preventative care. We need to tackle the social determinants of health – things like poor housing and air pollution that put extra strain on the NHS. We need to address health and social care in a fully integrated way. And we need to value and support our NHS staff properly, or else we will lose the very doctors, nurses, dentists and key workers the NHS depends on.
The challenges our NHS faces are too serious for political game-playing. We can’t afford more years of underfunding dressed up as ‘efficiency savings’ and ‘doing more with less’. And we cannot allow Labour and Conservatives to take it in turns to run our world class health services into the ground while blaming ‘the last government’ for ‘spending all the money’.
It’s time for honesty. It’s time for real solutions. That’s what our four Green MPs offer. We might not have the strength of the bigger parties, but we’ve got something more important – the courage to say that a modest increase in taxes on the wealthiest in society is needed to save the NHS.
The NHS isn’t just another political football. It’s the embodiment of the idea that we’re all in this together, that we look after each other when we’re at our most vulnerable. It needs Keir Starmer to use his huge majority to do whatever it takes, and that begins with telling the truth about the huge investment needed to save it.
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