Report Claims NHS Needs £2,000 in Tax from Every Household to Stay Afloat

Thursday, 24th May 2018

According to a new report, British households will need to pay an extra £2,000 a year in tax to help the NHS cope with the demands of an ageing population.

The report, which highlights the unprecedented financial pressures on the health system, said the NHS has been struggling to cope after the toughest financial constraints in its 70-year history had been imposed on the service. It claims that costs are bound to increase in the future due to demographic change, an increase in chronic illnesses and bigger bills for staff and drugs.

Niall Dickson, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, which commissioned the report and represents 85% of NHS bodies, said: “This report is a wake-up call. And its message is simple – if we want good, effective and safe services, we will have to find the resources to pay for them.”

The research was published as the Spectator reported that Theresa May had decided to increase the NHS’s budget by 3% a year for each of the remaining four years of this parliament. It means that, by 2022, the health service would be getting the £350m a week extra that was promised on the side of the Brexit battlebus in 2016. The magazine’s cover story, on changed Conservative attitudes to NHS funding, stated that, in making her decision, May had overridden Philip Hammond’s concerns that such large sums would be difficult to afford.

All political parties accept that NHS funding will need to be increased over the coming years, but the IFS and Health Foundation report said the resources needed far outstripped any tax pledges already made. It states that even modest improvements to services and higher pay to recruit and retain staff would require health spending to grow by 4% a year over the next 15 years, with front-loaded increases of 5% a year for the next five years.

Mr Dickson believes that the scale of what we face is not widely understood. “Over the next 15 years in the UK, there will be four million more people over 65 and the prospect of a 40% increase in hospital admissions and further large increases in the number of people with numerous long-term conditions.

“It is now undeniable that the current system and funding levels are not sustainable. Without new ways of delivering services and sustained investment, NHS and care services will not cope, and we will face a decade of misery in which the old, the sick and the vulnerable will be let down.”

Paul Johnson, the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) and an author of this report, said Britain was finally having to face up to one of the biggest choices in a generation.

“If we are to have a health and social care system which meets our needs and aspirations, we will have to pay a lot more for it over the next 15 years. This time we won’t be able to rely on cutting spending elsewhere – we will have to pay more in tax. But it is a choice: higher taxes and a health and social care system which meets our expectations and improves over time, or taxes at current levels and a more constrained health service delivering less than we have become accustomed to.”