May must consider tax rises to fund NHS and social care, say MPs

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/26/may-must-consider-tax-rises-to-fund-nhs-and-social-care-say-mps

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Theresa May is under mounting pressure to consider tax rises to fund Britain’s creaking health and social care system, as a group of high-powered MPs on Monday call for a new commission to recommend money-raising measures.

Among the signatories to a letter to the prime minister are 21 select committee chairs who are urging May to set up a year-long “parliamentary commission”, echoing the approach taken after the banking bailouts.

Sarah Wollaston, MP for Totnes and chair of the health and social care committee, said: “We call on the government to act with urgency and to take a whole system approach to the funding of the NHS, social care and public health. On behalf of all those who rely on services, we need to break down the political barriers and to agree a way forward.”

The letter says the commission – effectively a special select committee – could examine witnesses and make recommendations by Easter 2019.

Its 98 signatories warn that the NHS, public health and social care systems are “overstretched, poorly integrated and no longer able to keep pace with rising demand and the cost pressures of new drugs and technologies”.

“Without action, patients will experience a serious further decline in services and the blame for that will be laid squarely at the door of politicians,” they add.

As well as the select committee chairs – including Wollaston and Nicky Morgan – the letter has also been signed by former Treasury permanent secretary Nick Macpherson, and several former Conservative ministers including Nick Boles, Oliver Letwin and Anna Soubry.

Labour signatories include business committee chair Rachel Reeves, Anna Turley and Ruth Smeeth.

The government is already preparing a green paper on social care funding, expected to be published in the summer but the signatories say a broader approach is needed.

Wollaston said: “We believe this is the best way to examine what funding is needed both now and into the long term and to seek a consensus on the options for sharing the costs.”

May will be questioned about the proposal by the liaison committee of select committee chairs – which Wollaston heads – on Tuesday.

Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, has made a series of public comments in recent weeks spelling out the case for increased funding for the NHS – even if that means higher taxes.

One option under consideration is an “NHS tax”, whose revenue would be earmarked for health.

Speaking on ITV’s Peston on Sunday, Hunt said it was time to scrap what he had described as a feast or famine approach to funding the NHS. He called reports from the weekend that £4bn would be made available to the NHS in July “premature” but reiterated the need to consider higher taxes to make more cash available.

“There’s no doubt that NHS staff right now are working unbelievably hard and they need to have some hope for the future,” he said. “But I think their real concern is this rather crazy way we have been funding the NHS over the last 20 years, which has really been feast or famine.”

Asked about where extra resources could come from, he said: “We are a taxpayer-funded system, so in the end if we are going to get more resources into the NHS and social care system, it will have to come through the tax system and also through growth in the economy.”

He underlined that he would like to see 10 year funding settlements for health, allowing longer-term planning, and upfront investment in technologies that could boost efficiency, such as new IT systems.

A growing number of Conservative backbenchers have been raising the issue of the underfunding of healthcare.

The foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, has been among those calling for an increase in NHS funding, raising it at cabinet level in a well-briefed intervention in January.

Labour’s shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth expressed scepticism about the idea of a parliamentary commission. “A government could decide to make the tough decisions to fully fund the NHS if it had the political will to do so,” he said.

“Gordon Brown more than trebled the NHS budget in cash terms when we had a Labour government. We didn’t need a parliamentary talking shop to come up with that.”

The chancellor, Philip Hammond, has made the funding available for the NHS pay deal struck last week with nurses, midwives and other staff partly from Treasury reserves. But in his spring statement, he stressed he had already injected more cash into the NHS and social care.

A comprehensive spending review, setting out plans across all departments three years ahead is due next summer, with the overall spending total likely to be announced in Hammond’s autumn budget.