NHS: Deficit

Baroness Jolly Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord O’Shaughnessy]

That is a completely unfair accusation and unjustified, both by the funding settlement that the NHS had and by the improved settlement today. First, deficits have been falling year on year for the past couple of years in terms of both outturn and forecast, and that is before today’s announcement on additional funding. The Chancellor today announced over £2.5 billion-worth of extra revenue funding over the next two years. That means that the actual value of the spending review settlement will end up being £11.5 billion compared with £8 billion, so I reject the idea that this Government are not funding the NHS properly.

[Baroness Jolly (LD)]

My Lords, the NHS is very nearly 70. There was some continued investment in today’s Budget, which we welcome, but we consider that it is only a sticking plaster unless we look at social care and the NHS together. If we want the NHS to continue for another 70 years, we really need to see a change. A cross-party group of MPs visited the Prime Minister and put that to her, suggesting that there needs to be an all-party conversation about this—an all-party commission. Will the Minister tell the House whether the Government are minded to pursue that and, if not, why not?

[Lord O’Shaughnessy]

As the noble Baroness pointed out, additional spending is going in. I should point out that the proportion of public spending on health has increased under this Government, so even while fiscal retrenchment has taken place, more money has been spent on health. On the idea of a cross-party convention, we talk about building a cross-party consensus on social care with the Green Paper that will come out in due course. We need to focus on action. The danger with conventions and commissions is that they just prolong the process of making decisions, whereas moving ahead with decisions on both integration in the NHS and getting consensus behind reforming social care is the way forward.