NHS faces unrealistic budget and uncertainty over significant workforce challenges in the year ahead

Responding to the Spring Budget, Nuffield Trust Senior Policy Analyst Sally Gainsbury said: 

“Just two weeks from the new financial year, the NHS has been left with an unrealistic budget for the year ahead. It seems almost inevitable that the Chancellor will have to return to Parliament to address this in the not-too-distant future. 

“Our analysis of DHSC spending and government inflation projections finds that today’s Budget leaves the NHS with a £2 billion real terms funding cut from April this year. The NHS has been left with little certainty over how it will meet growing demand or address a workforce in crisis.  

“The Chancellor made this a budget about boosting the workforce across the economy, but the lack of the long-promised fully funded workforce plan for the NHS continues to delay meaningful action. The government remains silent on any funding to shore up a social care workforce eroded to near collapse. 

“Abolishing the lifetime cap on pensions is a broad measure and isn’t NHS targeted. It will likely address the concerns of some senior clinicians, but this one measure alone does not address the significant concerns over pay and working conditions of the majority of staff which is fuelling damaging strikes across the sector.  

“The aspiration to accept more drug approvals by other countries recognises that the UK regulator has often struggled to keep up with innovation since Brexit. The still unanswered question is whether and how it could go faster – with details thin on the ground today."