The NHS and social care system are suffering a virulent illness and the cause is obvious: a chronic lack of funding. Yet the government is refusing to provide the treatment needed. Four in five hospitals are now not safe enough, we are seeing longer waits for operations, slower ambulance response times and patients delayed in hospital for days and weeks on end because the social care they need isn’t available. The sick note is a long one.
This shouldn’t really come as a shock – this ailment has been obvious to anyone who uses the system. We spend a lower proportion of our GDP on health than almost any of our European neighbours and the government propose to further slash spending, while demand continues to rise. How exactly do the chancellor, Philip Hammond, and the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, expect services to cope? The chief inspector of the Care Quality Commission said just last week that the NHS “stands on a burning platform”. When he speaks this vividly, we should listen.
So there should be one essential priority for the chancellor when he delivers his budget on Wednesday. Save our most treasured national institution. Give the NHS and care systems the money they need.
The Liberal Democrats are calling for an emergency injection for 2017-18 of £4bn – to be split between health and social care – to bring these services back from the brink of real crisis. I don’t claim this will solve every frailty in our system, but it would be an urgent, short-term boost.
When the government faces a £100bn shortfall in public finances due to a Brexit squeeze, I realise the chancellor’s room for manoeuvre is limited; the economic situation is as grim as it is self-inflicted. But that doesn’t mean it is acceptable to leave the huge, gaping holes in our most essential social safety nets remain unrepaired. These are services we will all need, services that will be there for us when we are at our most desperate and vulnerable. We must do whatever is needed to safeguard them for generations to come.
Ultimately, we must find a long-term solution to the crisis in funding for the NHS and social care. Short-term injections of cash alone will not make services more sustainable indefinitely. That is why my colleague Norman Lamb, the former health minister, has assembled a commission of some of the country’s leading experts (don’t tell Michael Gove) to assess in more detail the scale of the financial need, and options for raising this revenue in the longer term – including through tax increases.
We need a funding settlement that will stretch beyond one parliament or one economic cycle, and I am proud that my party is prepared to be honest with the public about the challenges we’re facing and to be bold in proposing realistic solutions, which the Conservative Brexit government might not think sound quick or easy, but that I am convinced are essential.
He has also reached out to politicians of other parties, asking them to join him in working to secure a long-term, sustainable funding solution for the NHS and our care services. Protecting our NHS is a slogan Labour and the Conservatives have fought countless elections under. Well, now is the time to put those words into action. And while this battle is made a lot tougher by the economic challenges posed by that painful Brexit squeeze, I am in no doubt that it is still one worth fighting.
We cannot ignore a situation where more than a million older people are not getting the care they need and NHS trusts are declaring services to be in a state of emergency. The £4bn injection might seem a relatively modest one, considering this deeply concerning diagnosis. But it might just be enough to get it out of intensive care. I hope all progressives will join me in backing my campaign to give the NHS and care the funding it deserves, and so desperately needs.
Tim Farron: We need a £4bn cash injection now to save the health and care services
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