Monday 13 April 2015

Support for the NHS as Conservatives pledge an extra £8bn a year for NHS

Simon Stevens is in charge of the NHS and he set out what he wanted - an extra £8Billion increase in spending to protect our precious NHS; this has now been promised by the Conservatives, with a guarantee of an £8bn increase in spending per year above inflation by 2020. However, you can only do this if you have a strong economy,  a long term economic plan and a strategy. There will be other choices to be made on other departments.

The Chancellor has said "I can confirm that in the Conservative manifesto we will commit to a minimum real-terms increase in NHS funding of £8bn in the next five years.

That is a minimum of £8bn over and above the £2bn down payment that I announced in the autumn statement last year. We’ve funded the NHS through the last five years; today we commit to fund it for the next five years.

We can make this commitment because we’ve got the track record and a plan to grow our economy. New figures, confirmed by the Treasury, show that in the five years from 2010-11 to 2015-16 we are set to deliver a real-terms increase of £7.3bn. And we have done that at the same time as halving the deficit as a share of GDP and cutting income tax for 26 million people. In the next parliament we will continue with the same balanced approach."

You can read George Osbornes full article here: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/10/conservatives-plug-nhs-funding-gap