The chancellor has announced a £22.6bn funding boost for the NHS over two years, as well as £100m of capital funding ‘earmarked’ for 200 GP estates upgrades.
Delivering the Autumn Budget in the House of Commons today, Rachel Reeves set out plans to ‘fix the NHS’ with extra funding to deliver Labour’s manifesto promise to create an extra 40,000 elective appointments each week.
On capital spending, the Government will establish a ‘dedicated fund’ for general practice in order to deliver ‘around 200 upgrades to GP surgeries across England’, enabling practices to provide more patient appointments by improving the use of existing space.
This money will be available from April 2025 and is part of the Government’s commitment to provide ‘record levels of capital investment for health’ with an increase of £3.1bn between 2023/24 and 2025/26, bringing the total to £13.6bn.
The Treasury told Pulse that more details on how the funding will be allocated, including how eligible GP practices will be chosen, will be published ‘in due course’.
Around £1.5bn of total capital funding will be invested elsewhere in the NHS for ‘new surgical hubs, diagnostic scanners and new beds’ to help create more space in emergency departments and reduce waiting times.
Ms Reeves also announced the ‘difficult decision’ to increase the rate of employer National Insurance contributions (NICs) by 1.2 percentage points to 15%, as well as a 6.7% increase to the National Living Wage, which will be £12.21 from April 2025.
Despite the £22.6bn boost to day-to-day spending, the chancellor has also asked the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and all other departments to meet a 2% efficiency target in a bid to ‘save billions of pounds’.
Speaking in Parliament today, Ms Reeves said that the extra £22.6bn for the NHS is possible due to ‘difficult decisions’ on tax, welfare and spending.
‘This is the largest real-terms growth in day-to-day NHS spending outside of Covid since 2010,’ she said.
The chancellor added: ‘Many NHS buildings have been left in a state of disrepair, so we will provide £1bn of health capital investment next year to address the backlog of repairs and upgrades across our NHS.’
She also referenced Lord Darzi’s recent investigation into the NHS which found that it had been ‘chronically weakened’ by a lack of capital investment, with an overall shortfall of £37bn, which ‘could have rebuilt or refurbished every GP practice in the country’.
Andy Pow, board member of the Association of Independent Specialist Medical Accountants (AISMA), welcomed the £22.6bn funding increase but noted that covers a two-year period and uses 2023/24 as a baseline.
He continued: ‘Significant chunks of the increase will already have gone on pay uplifts in 2024/25. Higher National Insurance contributions for employers will eat further into the additional sums being invested into the health service.’
Mr Pow said the funding for 200 GP surgeries to upgrade their premises is a ‘positive step’.
‘However, we will have to wait until the Health Review is published next Spring to find out how additional funds are to be invested in primary care,’ he added.
RCGP chair Professor Kamila Hawthorne said that this cash injection into the NHS is ‘badly overdue’ and ‘much needed’.
She said: ‘Far too many patients are waiting far too long for the care they need. However, general practice is also seriously under resourced, and we are now looking to the upcoming Spending Review for much more detail on how GPs and our teams will be supported to deliver the Government’s plans to shift resources into the community to ensure patients get the care they need.
‘We are very pleased to see the promise of more funding for the NHS estate, including a dedicated fund to improve GP practices, which are crumbling around us.
‘More than a third (34%) of our members say their practice building is inadequate for providing care for patients.’
Earlier this month, a survey from the RCGP highlighted serious problems around ‘outdated’ infrastructure in GP practices, including equipment and buildings that ‘are falling apart’.
Responding to the announcement of £100m directed to GP estates, NHS Confederation’s director of primary care Ruth Rankine said the investment ‘will be vital’ for practices.
She said: ‘Our members working in primary care have been raising concerns about their estate for months with us now, so this specific capital funding for primary care is incredibly welcome.
‘With the secretary of state setting out the Government’s intention to shift towards a neighbourhood service, it’s good to see a down payment on this with this focus on out of hospital settings, which is not only best for patients wherever possible but also produces a higher return on investment to the Treasury in gross value added (GVA.)
‘We await the full detail on how it will be allocated but given the pressure primary care continues to face and especially as we approach winter, we hope the process will be as straightforward as possible and not bogged down with bureaucracy.’
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IT shoudl be automatic that any increase in Dof H spending results in at least 15% of that being diverted to General Practice.
So if an extra £22.6Bn being spend on the NHS, it should be automatic that at least £3.3 Bn for primary care.
And if £3.1Bn earmarked for capital investment, 465M should be earmarked for GP surgeries, not 100M.
200 lucky GP practices 🤔 I imagine this is for NHS prop co owned properties only. No mention of any mitigation for the huge employers hike for GP practices let alone the increase in consumable and services costs due to businesses trying to recoup their losses
Is that the same fund they are using this year, rebranded?