May's NHS 'Brexit dividend' claim draws scepticism and doubt

[Northerner]

Theresa May’s promise of £400m extra in weekly NHS spending within five years has been overshadowed by scepticism among experts and her own backbenchers over her claim it can be financed through a windfall delivered by Brexit.

Ahead of a major speech by the prime minister in which she will pledge a £20bn annual real-terms NHS funding increase by 2023-24, May was ridiculed for arguing that some of the money would come from a so-called Brexit dividend.

“At the moment, as a member of the European Union, every year we spend significant amounts of money on our subscription, if you like, to the EU,” she said in an interview on BBC One’s Andrew Marr show. “When we leave we won’t be doing that. It’s right that we use that money to spend on our priorities, and the NHS is our number-one priority.”

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said, however, that even the government had accepted the idea of an immediate post-Brexit boost to coffers would not happen. Two senior Tory MPs who are also doctors similarly criticised the proposal.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jun/17/theresa-may-nhs-funding-budget-rise-brexit

It's hard to believe that this 'dividend' for the NHS has been raised at all, given the way the £350m claim has been totally rubbished since the referendum 🙄

 

[mikeyB]

It’s all smoke and mirrors. It sounds like extra money, but all it will do is keep the NHS as it is now. It’s short of the amount Jeremy Hunt asked for to improve services, so it won’t. And the Brexit bonus is a barefaced lie, it’s right that it should be ridiculed.

 

[Northerner]

It’s all smoke and mirrors. It sounds like extra money, but all it will do is keep the NHS as it is now. It’s short of the amount Jeremy Hunt asked for to improve services, so it won’t. And the Brexit bonus is a barefaced lie, it’s right that it should be ridiculed.

I think what's also worrying is that they are asking the NHS for a '10 year plan'. Nothing wrong with that, of course, perfectly reasonable - but Simon Stevens was beaten with the stick of his 5-year plan every time he said the NHS needed more money, 'Ah, but you said you could manage, so you can't have any more, not our fault if the under-funding of social care means your plan could never work' 🙄

I've seen them talk in interviews about extra doctors and nurses, and training of them, but I've also said that this money won't be used for that. So where will the money for that come from?

For me, it's the oldest trick in the book - keep funding so low, that when you step in with something so much higher it appears to be massive, when in fact it's actually less than the average since 1948, it's the contrast that people notice (always reminds me of the little bit of Shakespeare that really hit home with me at school - in Henry IV, part 1 Prince Hal acts like a complete ass, but then he tells us in his soliloquy, 'My reformation, glittering o'er my fault, shall show more goodly and attract more eyes than that which hath no foil to set it off (etc.etc.)

 

[kentish maid]

I've seen them talk in interviews about extra doctors and nurses, and training of them, but I've also said that this money won't be used for that. So where will the money for that come from?

Also what is the point of more money if there isn't money to pay for training the staff to provide the care? Or am I missing something?

 

[Northerner]

Also what is the point of more money if there isn't money to pay for training the staff to provide the care? Or am I missing something?

I don't think you're missing anything, it's half measures all round Let's not forget that they changed nurse training bursaries to loans - they could easily have reversed that and made the bursaries a viable means of support rather than trying to load extra debt on people and ultimately putting off any person wanting to train as a mature student, plus no doubt many younger people. There are countless announcements about increasing funding for mental health care, but where are the staff going to come from? How many good people have been driven out of healthcare because of the pay freeze and often intolerable pressures? How many EU HCPs have left because of the uncertainty of being bargaining chips in Brexit?

They have no vision I also found it interesting that the NHS is now TM's 'Number one priority' - a year ago housing was number 1, but people have stopped complaining about that so much so it's all but been dropped as a priority.

 

[Bubbsie]

That must be the 'missing' £350 million quid Boris & Farage pledged would go to the NHS if/when we left the EU...I wondered where it went.