Rishi Sunak pledges £6 BILLION for the NHS to tackle Covid backlog

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Rishi Sunak is expected to unveil a £6billion package of funding for the NHS to ease the growing backlog and undo the enormous damage inflicted during the Covid pandemic in Wednesday’s budget. 

The Chancellor is due to set out the investment in NHS capital funding that will support the aim to deliver around 30 per cent more elective activity by 2024-25 compared to pre-Covid levels. 

This is equivalent to millions more checks, scans and procedures for non-emergency patients, the Treasury insisted.

It comes amid warnings from doctors that backlogs of more than five million patients waiting for non-emergency treatments are ‘dangerously close’ to crippling the health service.

In an effort to address the backlog of people waiting for checks, tests and scans, and help get waiting lists down, £2.3billion of the funding package will be used to try to transform diagnostic services.

But the additional funding is likely to raise eyebrows among Conservatives who are already upset over a lack of tax cuts to help businesses and workers struggling after 18 months of shutdowns.

In September NHS bosses were given a £30billion handout as Prime Minister Boris Johnson clobbered Britons with their highest tax burden since the Second World War. The health service will receive the vast majority of the £36billion raised by a National Insurance hike over the next three years, with social care receiving a £5.3billion slice. 

And the Liberal Democrats accused the Government of creating a ‘tax bombshell’ for small and medium-sized businesses by hiking national insurance.  

The waiting list for non-emergency treatment has been rising at a rate of 100,000 per month, up from under four million at the start of the pandemic to more than 5.7 million today, according to The Telegraph.

The number waiting more than 12 months nearly trebled to 292,138 in August, up from 111,026 at the same point last year. That prompted warnings from the British Medical Association that the ‘immense backlog of care is dangerously close to crippling our health service’.

To undo the damage inflicted during the pandemic, the Treasury said there will be at least 100 ‘one-stop-shop’ community diagnostic centres across England, including the 44 already announced. 

These centres are expected to help clear most existing test backlogs caused by the pandemic, including for CT, MRI and ultrasound scans, by the end of the parliament.

The Treasury said the additional capacity will also ensure the resilience of the country’s diagnostic services in the years to come.

The settlement to tackle backlogs also includes £1.5billion for increased bed capacity, equipment and new surgical hubs to tackle waiting times for elective surgeries.

Each hub will be equipped with four or five surgical theatres designated for critical elective surgeries.

A total of £2.1billion of the £5.9billion total will be invested in technology and data in a bid to improve efficiency and security within the NHS.

It is hoped the new and improved IT will help NHS staff have access to the fastest broadband, and that digital patient records will ensure patients get the best care wherever they are.

The Treasury said the £5.9billion funding is on top of the Government’s plan to spend £8billion to tackle the elective backlog over the next three years, and the £97billion additional funding the Government has provided to support health and care since the start of the pandemic.

Mr Sunak said: ‘We are committed to getting health services back on track and ensuring no one is left waiting for vital tests or treatment.

‘This is a game-changing investment in the NHS to make sure we have the right buildings, equipment and systems to get patients the help they need and make sure the NHS is fit for the future.’

Health Secretary Sajid Javid said: ‘Our phenomenal NHS has worked so hard to keep people safe during the pandemic and we’ll do whatever it takes to make sure people are getting the treatment they need as quickly as possible.

‘This £6billion investment will support the delivery of millions more checks, scans and procedures for patients across the country.

‘Business as usual won’t be enough, that’s why we are going to reform care with more community diagnostic centres, new surgical hubs and the latest technology to help recover NHS services by tackling waiting lists.’

Conservatives have accused Mr Sunak of being ‘captured by the Treasury’ as it was claimed he will only tinker around the edges of the levy, amid widespread calls for reform in the wake of the Covid pandemic.

At the same time, former Cabinet minister David Davis publicly lashed out at the Chancellor over taxes, questioning whether he was a ‘Thatcherite’, as he has previously claimed.

Writing in The Mail on Sunday, he said: ‘I knew Margaret Thatcher, so I will watch with interest whether he can match the brilliance that Thatcher, and her great Chancellor Nigel Lawson brought to government.

‘Sadly, every indication so far is that his current course will take us on to the rocks – not away from them.

‘I fear Rishi will do so by making a most un-Thatcherite choice to persevere with raising taxes as the solution to ballooning Government debt.’ 

Appearing on Sky’s Trevor Philips on Sunday, Mr Sunak said his ‘instincts’ were still for low taxes, but added: ‘I wish I hadn’t had to deal with coronavirus and a once-in-300 years economic shock and all the damage that has caused to the economy, an NHS backlog stretching into the millions that we thought it was really important, rightly, to get some funding in to address.

‘But those are the challenges I am grappling with, and I have to take those challenges and figure out what is the right way to do that and we have made some decisions that I believe, although they are difficult, they are the right decision and the responsible decisions.’

Asked about business rates he added that they would be covered in the Budget but signalled there would be little or no cuts.

‘Over the past year-and-a-half through coronavirus we’ve delivered about £16 billion worth of tax cuts on business rates to help hospitality and retail businesses get through all of this,’ he said.

‘There are people who say you should just abolish business rates, which I think is what the Labour Party position in. Business rates does obviously raise £25billion, I’m sure you’ll be asking her (Labour’s Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves) what is the system that is going to replace that if you are going to stand up and say you’d abolish that.

‘We have delivered short-term relief during the last 18 months through coronavirus, that support extends through to next year we will be talking a little bit more about the future wand what we can do about business rates next week in the Budget.’

Mr Sunak and Mr Johnson have faced down Tory complaints over their economic plans, insisting that higher taxation must be used instead of increasing public borrowing, as they seek to refloat the economy after the Covid pandemic.

The Chancellor used an article in The Sun to say that the Budget would ‘invest in public services, invest in growth, and invest in jobs’. 

‘Coronavirus has meant our economy has taken a hit. And in order to recover strongly, we need to be responsible because everything comes at a cost,’ he wrote.

‘And the money we spend is yours, the taxpayer’s money, not anyone else’s.

‘Earlier this year, I said I would be honest with the country about the challenges we face to ensure our public finances get back on to a strong footing. And the experiences of the last 18 months have made me more certain of how important a strong and resilient economy is.

‘That is why this week’s Budget and Spending Review will set out a plan to deliver the people’s priorities, support business, help our recovery, ease pressures on the cost of living but also to strengthen the public finances so we have a stronger economy for the British people.’ 

Mr Sunak is also considering cutting the tax on beer from kegs and sparkling English wine to protect pubs and vineyards from the economic damage wrought by Covid, and imposing a residential property developer tax to pay for the removal of flammable cladding from high-rise buildings.

The levy would be paid by housebuilders with profits of more than £25million who hoard land.

Mr Sunak is also expected to announce £3billion of investment in education, including the quadrupling of places on skills bootcamps and more classroom hours for up to 100,000 16- to 19-year-olds studying ‘T levels’.

He will also announce a £435million crime-fighting package in this week’s combined Budget and Spending Review – with a particular emphasis on tackling violence against women.

In his statement to MPs on Wednesday, Mr Sunak is expected to say that he has earmarked £355million for measures such as improved street lighting and better CCTV, with a further £80million going to the Crown Prosecution Service.

In an acknowledgement of the national revulsion over the murder of Sarah Everard, who was kidnapped, raped and murdered by serving Metropolitan Police officer Wayne Couzens, the Chancellor expects the CPS to devote a significant proportion of the extra funds to improving its response to cases of sexual violence.

It also coincides with rising alarm over the number of cases around the country of women being drugged after being spiked by injection or through having their drinks tampered with in nightclubs.

Exact details of the funding were still being thrashed out with Justice Secretary Dominic Raab this weekend, with Mr Raab understood to be the last Cabinet Minister to reach agreement with the Chancellor over the final Spending Review settlement.

It comes as research commissioned by the Lib Dems said businesses with fewer than 250 employees would pay an extra £2.4billion a year due to the 1.25 per cent rise in national insurance announced by the Prime Minister in September to cover the cost of social care.

Research from the House of Commons showed areas such as Birmingham, Glasgow, Leeds and areas of London were set to pay tens of millions extra.

But other areas in the so-called former red wall, where the Tories took many seats in the 2019 election, are also due to be hit, including Kirklees in West Yorkshire and County Durham, the research shows.

Cornwall, Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire are the areas outside of cities where small businesses will pay the most, it shows.

The research said that of the £8billion that will be raised from businesses through the rise, 70 per cent will come from the largest 1 per cent of businesses – those with at least 250 employees.

But Christine Jardine, Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesperson, said: ‘The Conservatives’ broken manifesto promise will create a tax bombshell for the small businesses that are the backbone of our communities. It’s little wonder that voters no longer see the Conservative Party as the party of low tax.

‘We have already lost far too many treasured shops from our high streets, and too many businesses are drowning in tax rises and red tape.

‘Rishi Sunak must give small businesses the chance to grow again instead of clobbering them with a crippling tax rise. The Chancellor is out of touch with small businesses and if he truly cared about their survival, he would cancel this tax hike immediately.

‘The Liberal Democrats want to unleash the power of small businesses to create jobs and drive our economic recovery, by giving them the tax cut they need and deserve.’

The party is calling on the Chancellor to slash small and medium-sized businesses’ employer contributions at Wednesday’s Budget instead of raising them.

On Sunday, Mr Sunak said he wanted to be a tax-cutting Chancellor, despite the Government raising national insurance to pay for social care.

He told BBC One’s The Andrew Marr Show: ‘Of course, my instincts are to do that, that’s what I believe, I want people to better keep more of their money, I want to reward people for working.

‘I think that is a good thing and I think that will help drive economic growth.

‘But as we discussed, I’ve also had to grapple with an economic shock, the biggest in 300 years, borrowing that (is) the highest since World War Two, and things like the elective backlogs in the NHS being at record levels which we want to make progress on. Those are some of the challenges.’

The Government insisted at the time that the rise was needed in order to help the NHS recover from the pandemic and to introduce reforms.