Liz Truss would be “robbing Peter to pay Paul” if she diverted £13bn of funding for the NHS to deal with a Covid backlog in social care, experts have said.
The Conservative leadership frontrunner told a hustings on Tuesday night that she would spend the £13bn earmarked for the NHS to catch up on delayed treatment after Covid on social care instead.
She said: “I would spend that money in social care. Quite a lot has gone to the NHS. I would give it to local authorities. We have people in beds in the NHS who would be better off in social care. So put that money into social care.
“We put the extra £13bn in and what people who work in the NHS tell me is the problem is the number of layers in the organisation they have to go through to get things done, the lack of local decision-making. That’s what people are telling me is the problem, rather than a lack of funding.”
Richard Murray, the chief executive of the King’s Fund, a health thinktank, commended Truss for paying attention to social care, as he said a sustained lack of funding had left England with a system that was failing many people, but he said the NHS needed the funding as well.
“Liz Truss’s comments are welcome recognition that the lack of social care capacity has a knock-on impact on other health and care services, but it’s hard to see how the NHS could have this funding removed without it impacting the standards of care patients receive,” he said.
“The unfortunate reality for whoever takes over as prime minister is that robbing Peter to pay Paul is not a sustainable solution to the health and care crisis.”
The £13bn, due to be raised from higher national insurance (NI) contributions brought in under Boris Johnson, was always intended to be shifted to social care in later years, but in the short term it is allocated to help the NHS recover from the impact of the pandemic.
Truss has said she would scrap the NI rise and find the extra funding from general taxation, but she said it should go towards social care.
It comes after it emerged that Truss co-authored a paper in 2009 supporting the introduction of charges for patients to see their GP and cutting doctors’ pay by 10%. She wrote an article alongside it advocating NHS cuts, saying the health service “cannot not be put on a pedestal”.
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Labour questioned Truss’s comments about diverting money from the NHS to social care. Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, highlighted the intense pressure the NHS is under even before winter has hit.
“When the NHS is facing the biggest crisis in its history, the last thing it needs is a prime minister who has called for cutting its budget, charging patients to see a doctor and slashing doctors’ pay,” he said.
“There is no doubt that we need to recruit more care workers to ease the pressure on the NHS and ensure residents are well looked after. Labour will recruit and retain more carers by ensuring full rights at work, decent standards, fair pay and proper training as the first step towards building a national care service.”