Labour has warned that ministers cannot keep just throwing “ever increasing taxpayers’ money” at the NHS, as the party called for sweeping reforms.
Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, said putting “ever increasing amounts of taxpayers’ money into a 20th century model of care” could bring about the demise of the health service, as he called for sweeping reforms.
The Labour MP made the case as NHS officials seek to close a £7 billion funding gap next year, on top of planned increases in the health budget.
Mr Streeting said the health service needed “significant additional resources”, insisting that Labour’s own plans to expand the NHS workforce showed “the cavalry is coming”.
But he said it would be a mistake to keep increasing NHS budgets without making significant changes to modernise the system, in ways which would save money and lives.
“I think it is true to say that if the answer to the NHS challenge in the long-term is only ever increasing amounts of taxpayers’ money into a 20th century model of care, then there isn’t going to be an NHS in the future,” he told a King’s Fund conference in London.
“There certainly isn’t going to be an NHS that is publicly funded and free at points of use in the future,” he added, saying that he understood the high levels of “public anxiety” about the NHS.
