The UK is turning into a “National Health State,” the Resolution Foundation has said, after Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced a £29 billion annual increase in NHS funding.
The think tank’s analysis of Reeves’s Spending Review estimates that by the end of financial year 2028–29, the health service will account for half (49 percent) of all day-to-day public services spending, up from 34 percent in 2009–10.
On Wednesday, the chancellor announced a record £29 billion funding injection, which the Treasury said will deliver on the government’s promise to cut waiting lists, improve patient care, and modernise services.
Resolution Foundation Chief Executive Ruth Curtice said in a statement, “Health accounted for 90 per cent of the extra public service spending, continuing a trend that is seeing the British state morph into a National Health State, with half of public service spending set to be on health by the end of the decade.”
The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) noted in its initial response to the Spending Review that the funding increase for the NHS was substantial, but questioned whether it will be enough to get the health service back to meeting its 18-week target for hospital waiting times within this Parliament, something which the think tank said was “enormously ambitious.”
£6 Billion to Speed up Tests and Treatments
After the Spending Review, Reeves announced that £6 billion of the allocated funds will be used to deliver up to four million additional NHS tests, scans, and procedures over the next five years.
This will be spent on ambulances, new scanners, increasing diagnostic centre capacity, and more Urgent Treatment Centres.
The government will also invest £30 billion in day-to-day maintenance and repair of the NHS estate, with over £5 billion allocated for critical repairs over the next five years.
Hellbound and Down 