Hospital chiefs confront Jeremy Hunt over NHS funding crisis
2 min read
Hospital bosses have called on Jeremy Hunt to increase funding to the NHS in order to end the winter crisis.
In a letter to the Health and Social Care Secretary, NHS Providers - the body that represents hospitals - warns that the service has reached a “watershed moment” and requires more cash if it is to remain operational.
Chris Hopson, the chief executive of NHS Providers, writes: “The Government now needs to set out how it will create the sustainable, long-term health and care funding settlement you have rightly called for.
“Given the urgency of this task, substantial progress needs to be made by budget 2018.”
He also cites the example of the previous Labour government, praising big cash injections it made in the early 2000s.
The move comes after the Prime Minister was forced to apologise when thousands of operations were postponed as they struggled to cope with increased demand.
Theresa May also sparked a backlash when she insisted that the NHS had been "better prepared for these winter pressures than it has been before," before adding that “nothing's perfect”.
Yesterday, Mr Hunt admitted that “significantly more funding” would be needed over the next decade to keep the service afloat.
Speaking in the Commons, he told MPs: “We need to build a national consensus as to how we are going to find that funding.
“And my own view is that we should try and do that for a 10-year period, not a five-year period.”
But shadow health secretary Jon Ashworth rounded on Mr Hunt, accusing him of creating the service’s problems.
“This is not just a winter crisis. This is an all-year round funding crisis, a year-round staffing crisis, a year-round social care crisis, a year-round health inequality crisis – manufactured in Downing Street by this government.
“Isn’t the truth that doctors and nurses have lost confidence in him, patients have lost confidence in him, the prime minister it seems has lost confidence in him? He fights for his own job but he won’t fight for the NHS.
“Our patients are crying out for change and they will look at the health secretary still in post today and see – to coin a phrase – nothing has changed, nothing has changed.”
Earlier this week Mr Hunt clung on to his role in Mrs May’s new year reshuffle by refusing to step down.
It was also later announced that social care had been added to his brief.
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