The governments 'sustainability and transformation' scheme is impossible without capital investment
The government’s ‘sustainability and transformation plans’ (STP) for the NHS are unfeasible without an upfront capital investment of £9.5 billion, new analysis from the BMA has found.
Health managers across England have been asked to draw up STPs, in order to plug the gaps in health and care and make the service more efficient and, eventually, financially sustainable.
However, the BMA has found, using a series of freedom of information requests, that trusts have nothing like the capital required to deliver such an overhaul, particularly because capital funds are already being diverted into day-to-day spending as trust’s face gaping deficits.
BMA council chair Mark Porter commented:
“From the very beginning this process was carried out in near secrecy by rushed health and social care leaders trying to develop impossible plans for the future while struggling to keep the NHS from the brink of collapse.
“The clinicians who are expected to deliver this flawed revolution were not engaged and many staff have had little or no involvement.”
The medical union accuses the government of lacking the political will to invest in a lasting settlement for the NHS.
“The reality is that these plans have become a vehicle for £26bn of covert savings – yet another crippling blow dealt by a Government with a vicious austerity agenda and lacking the gumption to come up with properly funded solutions for a health service in crisis.
“There is clearly nowhere near the funding required to carry out these plans and it appears that NHS England and NHS Improvement have probably known that for quite some time.
“The STP project is built on the least stable of foundations. These plans are fast becoming completely unworkable and may have been a waste of time and effort in an NHS desperate for help.”
The government has demanded that NHS trusts find ‘efficiency savings’ in order to plug their funding gaps, but front line staff warn that the service can’t take any more.
See: Hardworking staff keep our NHS going – they don’t deserve a pay cut
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6 Responses to “Jeremy Hunt demands NHS transformation but won’t shell out the £9.5bn it will cost”
Will
It has been pretty obvious to me that Hunt (sorry about the spelling) is a very calculating man with only one agenda. He and his friends want to privatise the NHS as soon as possible so that they can buy up the shares in the corporations that will invest in it. The only way that capitalism can work is to exploit the least wealthy and give it to the wealthiest. It is just a question of maths.
Michael WALKER
I doubt if Jeremy Hunt has £9.5B of his own to spend on anything let alone the NHS.
Of course, if people are so keen to save it, there is a mechanism to pay more tax to the Treasury as a gift.
When I suggest it, no-one volunteers . I wonder why?
If supporters of the NHS were serious, they would raise money for it and shame the Government into doing something. But as it is all words but no action, it’s virtue signalling -again.
Instead they whinge about privatisation – when Labour did more than the Tories..Hint: whingeing achieves nothing..
ted francis
Why is nobody shouting it from the roof-tops. Tory strategy for privatisation:
1. Starve a public service/industry of funding.
2. Create a supply crisis of services/product.
3. Offer the service/industry on the open market at a knock-down price.
4. Sweeten the pot by including publicly-funded subsidies.
Has everyone forgotten the railways, the steel industry, the motor industry, the Royal Mail, the energy industries?
This is just a taster. Virgin have got their greasy fingers on so many sectors of the NHS and are lining up many more. G4S has tasty contracts in the ambulance service. GP practices have been given the freedom (encouraged) to out-source services to the private sector.
I am not a conspiracy theorist, all the above are based upon fact and personal personal experience.
patrick newman
Number one issue for Labour – PMQ’s and Bye election campaign. I will be judging Corbyn on how much he uses and how effective he is in tackling May on the NHS this lunchtime!
Vera Watson
Tax-payers’ money spent to support the NHS is not an expense it is an INVESTMENT IN THE FUTURE OF THIS COUNTRY. The real cost would be allowing the NHS to be privatised and millions of people losing out on a highly valued service. FREE AT THE POINT OF NEED as the founder Bevan said.