Following the Prime Minister’s promise of more cash for the NHS, a new report calls for a parliamentary inquiry into how to raise this money now and into the future.
The proposed extra money for the NHS – a 3.4% annual increase over the next five years – is significant and will help stem a further decline in standards. But this new spending will be unsustainable unless the Government has a realistic plan for how the money will be raised.
This Institute for Government report dismisses the idea of a ‘Brexit dividend’ and argues that unless there is a clear way to raise the additional money it will have to come from cuts to other parts of public expenditure, where there is little low-hanging fruit left to pick.
The report, the result of a project supported by the Health Foundation, concludes that a parliamentary inquiry could help get to the root of this question while building political support for an answer.
Note
This is one of many reports discussing future funding of Health and Social Care, ahead of the social care green paper, which will consider the funding scheme as proposed in the Conservative election manifesto
Taken as a whole the reports examine future (rising) costs and how they will be met via higher tax, higher national insurance, financial contributions from pensioners or increased burden on future generations - either generation X, Millennials (Generation Y) or Generation Z.
The reports include:
Securing the future: funding health and social care to the 2030s - Institute for Fiscal Studies
Adult social care funding: a local or national responsibility? - Institute for Fiscal Studies
A fork in the road: next steps for social care funding reform – Kings Fund
A New Generational Contract – Resolution Foundation
A welfare generation: lifetime welfare transfers between generations - Resolution Foundation