Hammond criticised over NHS Autumn Statement absence

Former health secretary Andrew Lansley has joined the growing voice expressing disappointment at Chancellor Philip Hammond over the lack of extra funding for the NHS and social care in the Autumn Statement.

With adult social care budgets having been cut and increasing pressure on the NHS, Lansley warned that UK healthcare is facing an ‘incredibly difficult’ period in the coming years.

Despite Prime Minister Theresa May remaining adamant that the Better Care Fund was supporting social care in the country, Lansley expressed his disappointment in a system that amounted to ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’, suggesting that problems were not going to be remedied ‘by taking money out of the NHS budget and passing it to local authorities’.

The peer told the BBC’s World at One: “I think the time is now to put some measure in place to try and help health and social care through the next two years.

“In the last parliament a challenging target was set and it was achieved. The trouble is in this parliament, what has been asked of the NHS is not just more of the same but even more, and I’m afraid what was evident in the last financial year was when you take the level of support for the NHS below a two per cent increase – to hospitals, that is – and the demand is rising at four per cent there comes a point where they start to go in to significant deficit.

“The front-end loading of the money for the NHS in this parliament in to this financial year will probably mean those deficits come down this year, but without action next year and the year after those deficits will rise again and the accumulated deficit will make it very difficult for hospitals in particular to cope.”