NHS: Miliband refuses to sign up to ‘totemic’ £8bn increase

So Labour has once again refused to be lured into promising that now totemic £8bn extra for the NHS. In keeping with its pledge to be the party of fiscal responsibility, Ed Miliband said:  “You can’t fund the NHS with an IOU.”  In fact, he said pretty much the same thing five times in the space of seven sentences.

Instead, he repeated his pledge from the party conference that there would be “8,000 more GPs, 20,000 more nurses and 3,000 more midwives, paid for by a mansion tax on properties worth over £2m, a levy on tobacco firms, and by tackling
tax avoidance”.

The tax on the properties will help, they say, raise the £2.5bn a year for an NHS time to care fund.

The £8bn is based on sums from Simon Stevens, head of NHS England, in his five year forward view that the health service will need an extra £30bn by the end of the decade and that while his plans could find £22bn, it still leaves a gap.

The Conservatives pledged to fund that extra £8bn at the weekend, leading to those fiscal irresponsibility claims from Mr Miliband.

The £8bn figure, though, is becoming increasingly arbitrary.  As the Health Foundation has pointed out, it is a minimum requirement if there is any hope of closing that funding gap.

And it is also based on the five year forward view proposals actually becoming a reality.  While admired as a plan for the NHS, it still requires an active commitment across the entire health service for it to work.

The chances are the £8bn being touted around this election will become many more billions by the next election.

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