The NHS is to receive an additional £10 billion a year above inflation by 2020, ‘delivering in full the Five Year Forward View’, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, has announced.
Amid considerable pressure from the medical community, his Autumn 2015 Spending Review also revealed that the government is to ‘frontload’ almost £6 billion by the first year of the Review.
The Treasury said that over the course of this Parliament the government would spend over half a trillion pounds on the health service – ‘an unprecedented level of investment’. The announcement said: “The additional funding will allow the NHS to offer 800,000 more operations and treatments, two million more diagnostic tests, and 5.5 million more outpatient appointments, and spend up to £2 billion more on new drugs.” The additional funds are also intended to allow the development of better out-of-hospital services.
The Treasury and Department of Health said: “The additional investment will deliver a truly seven-day health service, with the services people need being offered in hospitals at the weekend, and people able to access a GP at evenings and weekends. By 2020, the DH said, everyone would be able to access GP services in the evenings and at weekends – requiring 5,000 extra GPs, with £750 m of investment.
The Department of Health will receive £4.8 bn in capital funding in every year of the Spending Review, improving services so they are delivered nearer to patients’ homes, while the continued roll-out of the 50 ‘vanguard’ sites will ‘enhance services in local areas’, bringing together home care, mental health, community nursing, GP, and hospital services.
Up to £300 m more will be spent on cancer diagnostics every year by 2020-2021.
In addition £500 m will be spent on new hospitals, including in Cambridge, Brighton, and Sandwell, while selling surplus estate ‘will generate a further £2 bn for reinvestment in the health service, while releasing land for 26,000 new homes’.
The Five Year Forward View also targets £22 billion in efficiency savings – ‘equivalent to two to three per cent per annum’ – in areas including better procurement, better use of NHS resources, and reducing avoidable hospital attendances. The savings achieved will be re-invested in frontline services.
George Osborne said: “You can only have a strong NHS if you have a strong economy, and it is only because we have taken the difficult decisions needed to cut the deficit and are delivering economic security that we are able to commit an additional £10 billion a year by 2020 to the NHS.
“We will deliver £6 bn a year extra investment straight away, as those in charge of the NHS have requested. This means I am providing the health department with a half a trillion pound settlement – the biggest ever commitment to the NHS since its creation.”
