The NHS does not need “ever-increasing amounts of taxpayers’ money”, Wes Streeting has said following claims Labour’s health funding plan was too small.
The shadow Health Secretary told the latest episode of i‘s podcast Labour’s Plan For Power that pouring more money “into a broken system” would not fix it.
His comments came after the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said Labour’s proposals for NHS reform would only amount to “teeny weeny” amounts of extra health spending.
Mr Streeting said the IFS had “fallen into the trap” of believing money was the only answer to the question of how to improve healthcare.
He also argued the money “simply isn’t there” in the current economic climate to continue increasing NHS spending.
“I’m surprised the IFS have fallen into the trap of thinking that the only answer to the NHS’s challenges is more money,” Mr Streeting said.
“In fact, the argument I’ve set out … throughout my time as shadow Health Secretary is that pouring ever-increasing amounts of taxpayers’ money into a broken system is not going to get the NHS back on its feet and crucially fit for the future.
“And we’ve got to do that against the backdrop where the Tories have trashed the public finances.
“So frankly, even if [Labour’s shadow Chancellor] Rachel Reeves had a complete personality transplant and suddenly became this big spending chancellor, the money simply isn’t there.
“There’s no shortage of things I’d like to do in the NHS and social care. The constraints are the state of the economy and the state of the public finances.”
In a previous episode of Labour’s Plan For Power IFS’s Paul Johnson questioned the impact of the health spending Labour was promising.
“One of the things Keir Starmer said in the conference speech was that they were going to spend £1bn of that money on getting more appointments in the NHS,” he said.
“Well, we just need a sense of perspective here. £1bn in an NHS budget of £180bn is next to nothing. And two million appointments in an NHS which I think does 100 million outpatient appointments a year is also next to nothing.
“So it sounds great and it’s better than nothing arguably. But these are teeny weeny numbers.”
The British Medical Association (BMA) union has warned that Labour’s spending plan will not be enough to make the difference needed to see an improvement.
Katie Bramall-Stainer, chair of the committee of GPs at the BMA said: “We may well say, ‘oh, well, you can’t keep on putting more money into the NHS’.
“The truth is, because it’s been starved of so much… I suspect unfortunately for, Wes Streeting and unfortunately for Rachel Reeves, that’s going to cost a jolly sight more than £1.1bn.”
But Mr Streeting argued that voters “cannot afford punitive tax rises” to keep funding ballooning health spending.
“I think one of the things that Labour politicians instinctively understand because of the areas of the country we represent and actually because of our own personal backgrounds as well, is that voters can’t afford punitive tax rises,” he said.
“People on low and middle incomes have been clobbered by the Conservatives over the last 13 years.
“So we can’t just reach for the solutions of the last Labour government and say, oh, we’re just going to chuck up national insurance to fund the NHS – because people can’t afford it.”
Labour’s Plan For Power: The NHS and your health” is the second episode of an exclusive new i podcast series examining what a government led by Sir Keir Starmer would actually do if it wins the next election.
Hosted by Paul Waugh, i‘s chief political commentator, this fascinating four-part series will also dive into Labour’s plans for the NHS, Brexit and the North-South divide.
