Responding to the Budget and Spending Review, Nuffield Trust
Chief Executive Nigel Edwards said:
“While the NHS has received an additional degree of certainty
over its funding, social care is once again treated as the poor
relation. The budget set out will not be enough to truly overhaul
a broken system that leaves hundreds of thousands without the
care they should get, and will not address the urgent situation
as we head into winter.
On social care:
“Increases of 3% across all local government services are
welcome, but they are not enough to address the disastrous
situation in social care. The sector will face a stark
choice between trying to improve access to care and support for
people, or simply trying to stabilise the system in which care
providers are on their knees hampered by a devastating shortage
of staff.
“The government has handed the sector an increase in funding with
one hand but taken it away with the other given competing
pressures on these stretched budgets. The increase in the
national living wage and national insurance contributions will
put extra pressure on providers. The improvement in wages
and unemployment is great news for the UK as a country, but it
will drive up the costs of expanding the social care workforce
still further at a time when vacancies are spiralling.
“Without transformative funding, we aren’t going to see the real
changes required to truly fix social care: widen
access, improve working conditions, support
carers or improve the way the system works. It is not
clear that there is enough funding available to cover the
ambition for people who pay for their own care to get a fair
price.
“To raise funds, councils will once again be forced to rely on
council tax increases which does not represent a fair or optimal
way to increase funds and widens the gap between areas able to
raise more funds and those that can’t.
On the NHS:
“Investment in NHS facilities, buildings and equipment has seen a
much-needed rise to over £10bn a year across the next three
years. For some time, the NHS has needed to see some longer-term
security around these historically raided budgets which will
allow the health service to plan and fund these vital upgrades
and projects.
“But the ambition of increasing the number of scans, operations
and patients that can be seen, on top of upgrading hospitals,
increased construction costs and repairing £9.2bn worth of urgent
maintenance after decades of raided capital budgets will place a
heavy draw on these funds.
“It is striking that there is a lack of strategic workforce
investment alongside this boost in funding for facilities.
Staffing is recognised as the number one issue for the
sustainability of the health service. Recovery from the pandemic
not only rests on investment but on hard-working staff as well.”
