There will, no doubt, be much trumpeting about a promise of new money - of uncertain amount - for the NHS over the next few days.
The reality is that almost all this money (barring £300 million from bank fines) is being diverted from other spending.
And all this money represents the admission of previous budgeting failures by George Osborne. The need for extra funding in the NHS just to keep services going is widely known. It was certainly known in March. But the money was not allocated then. Instead NHS staff were left to fret about how to try to achieve the impossible with insufficient money to meet need. Now Osborne has corrected a small part of his mistake, because the settlement is still not nearly enough. And we are supposed to celebrate.
I wouldn't suggest anyone does. I suggest we concentrate on the initial mistake and that it was George Osborne who made it at considerable cost to NHS efficiency and morale, as well as the nation's health.
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Richard,
Would you agree that all of your points about the forthcoming promise of new money for the NHS will also apply, with equal force, to any further promise of new money for public services that the Coalition might make between now and the general election?
No
Not if they were not anticipated to be required, widely
It was interesting to note in yesterday’s Guardian article (Osborne under fire over £2bn NHS pledge) that journalist Andrew Sparrow commented that the row ‘highlights how difficult it will be for the next Government to increase health spending in real terms’
It is as though Government spending and the huge tax gap exist in parallel universes’.
The point is underlined by Labour’s obsession with new, hypothecated taxes, which seems to signal an aversion to collect the taxes the Nation is already owed.
(It’s difficult to see how more new taxes targeted at those best equipped to avoid them is going to help. Ed Balls has already stated that the Mansion Tax will not be applied to anyone who is asset rich but cash poor…
How many billionaires are suddenly going to discover that the £10m house is theirs but oddly everything else is in the wife’s name).
Isn’t it odd that nobody has the money for the NHS, but can find the cash for the colossal white elephant and funding hole that will be HS2?