The UK's National Health Service (NHS) has been sidelined by finance minister Rishi Sunak, whose "whatever it takes" spring budget failed to provide the investment needed to improve health and social care services, John Puntis, the co-chair of the Keep Our NHS Public advocacy group, told Sputnik in an interview
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 05th March, 2021) The UK's National Health Service (NHS) has been sidelined by finance minister Rishi Sunak, whose "whatever it takes" spring budget failed to provide the investment needed to improve health and social care services, John Puntis, the co-chair of the Keep Our NHS Public advocacy group, told Sputnik in an interview.
On Wednesday, Sunak pledged to do "whatever it takes" as he announced a further 65 billion Pounds ($90 billion) in funding to prop up the country's economy amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The NHS is set to receive 3 billion pounds ($4.1 billion) to support its recovery from the pandemic, according to documents published after the chancellor addressed the House of Commons, but Puntis said that half of the funds had already been announced prior to the budget.
"Half of that was money that had previously been announced to cut waiting list backlogs and for mental health, so that wasn't really new. So it's pretty pitiful actually, and somehow the NHS and social care have been left out of the big picture when you would have thought they would have been top of the list in many ways given what's been going on over the past year," the Keep Our NHS Public co-chair remarked.
Puntis said that the NHS needed urgent investment to meet the massive backlog of elective surgeries, numbering roughly 10 million, that has built up as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, also noting that funds were required for construction works and replacing equipment.
"There's now a capital funding deficit of 9 billion [pounds, $12.4 billion] in the NHS. That is work that hasn't been done on maintenance and equipment that hasn't been updated or replaced, or building that needs doing that hasn't been done," Puntis remarked, warning that the Conservatives will struggle to meet their 2019 general election pledge to build dozens of new hospitals.
In Sunak's budget, day-to-day spending at the Department for Health and Social Care is set to be cut by 30 billion pounds ($41 billion) to 169.1 billion pounds ($233 billion) in the 2021/22 fiscal year.
