The watchdog overseeing how ministers use official statistics has told the government to be clearer and more exact in its claims about NHS funding after it investigated Theresa May’s contentious claim that she was giving the health service a £10bn boost.
The UK Statistics Authority looked into the prime minister’s repeated use of the £10bn claim after Labour and the British Medical Association complained that the figure was misleading and wrong. It has asked the Treasury to overhaul how government spending on both the NHS and health more widely is presented in order to minimise the risk of further “confusion” about the size of budget rises.
The UKSA’s intervention followed an increasingly public disagreement between May and Simon Stevens, the chief executive of NHS England, over how much extra funding the government had pledged to give the health service over the course of this parliament. May has put the figure at £10bn in the House Commons, a newspaper interview and at the Conservative party conference. She said that sum meant her administration was giving the NHS more money than the £8bn it had asked for in 2014 in order to transform how it works and close a £30bn budget gap by 2020.
Jon Ashworth, the shadow health secretary, accused the prime minister of exaggerating the true sum and using “spin” to try to present the government in a better light over the NHS. Dr Mark Porter, chair of the BMA’s ruling council, had also asked the UKSA to look into May’s claim.
In 2015, then chancellor George Osborne said the NHS in England would receive £8bn more between 2016-17 and 2020-21. But the Conservatives began saying they were giving it £10bn soon after they won last year’s general election. The larger figure comes from adding in the £2bn boost the NHS received in 2015-16 and was already announced by the time Osborne made his pledge.
Ed Humpherson, the UKSA’s director general for regulation, replied to Ashworth on Monday, saying that the watchdog “has considered the statements made and reflected that for any statement drawing on official statistics or other public data the following principles should be followed: the source of the statement should be clear and accessible; aspects pertaining to the data such as time period represented should be clear and; it should be very clear about what is being measured and in what context.”
He also said confusion had arisen because “while NHS England spending is rising, some other elements of the Department of Health budget are decreasing”. Health thinktanks, NHS groups and Labour and the Liberal Democrats have all criticised Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, for slashing the non-NHS parts of his department’s budget – such as money for public health and for Health Education England to educate and train health professionals – by several billions of pounds in order to free up cash to help ministers give NHS England the promised £8bn rise.
Humpherson said: “While the Department of Health has been when asked about the nature of the estimated real terms increase in health spending and its split between NHS England and the department’s overall budget, the total health spending figures are much less frequently referred to by government and may be less readily accessible.”
The UKSA intends to ask the Treasury to “investigate whether in future they can present estimates for NHS England and total health sending separately. I will also explore with officials producing these figures other ways in which they might ensure clarity around sources, time periods and what is being measured, and in what context, when reporting on the level of increase in real budget allocations to NHS England.”
While Hunt has acknowledged that the £10bn was the budget increases over a six-year period, May has yet to do the same.
Ashworth said the UKSA’s response showed it had endorsed his concerns about the £10bn figure. “This response makes clear that the government’s claims about an extra £10bn for the NHS are very misleading and I’m glad that the UKSA have asked for the government to present the figures more clearly in future.”
Meanwhile, Dr Sarah Wollaston, the Conservative MP and ex-GP who chairs the health select committee, has thrown her weight behind Stevens after a story in the Mail on Sunday claimed that Downing Street was keen to oust the NHS boss because he had publicly disagreed with May’s account of the NHS’s budget.
“I asked him a question at Commons health [committee] and Simon Stevens was right to answer truthfully. It’s called duty of candour”, she tweeted. “If No 10 aides really are ‘gunning for’ Stevens for upholding his duty of candour, that would set a disgusting example to the NHS.”
Wollaston added that “there cannot be one rule for government and another for NHS staff. I’m sick of post-truth politics and the double standards on duty of candour”.
Government scolded by watchdog over NHS funding claims
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