The Department of Health and Social Care has provided the following answer to your written parliamentary question (86525):
Question:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much of the funding increase for the NHS announced in the Autumn Budget and Spending Review 2021 will be spent on reducing waiting lists in the NHS in England. (86525)
Tabled on: 03 December 2021
Answer:
Edward Argar (Minister of State):
We have made £2 billion available this year to start to tackle the backlog. Over the next three years, we plan to spend more than £8 billion to support elective recovery and reduce waiting lists in England.
December 9, 2021
No mention of the £2 billion for diversity and inclusion managers they’re advertising for
£90k salaries plus offices, support staff, pension and expenses.
December 9, 2021
How very confusing.
I thought that the plague had re-emerged?
How can the backlog be tackled when there are no GP appts. And the hospitals are inundated and overwhelmed?
December 9, 2021
Interesting they do not say how they will spend the money, purchasing private hospital space would be the simplest, if all the hospitals and staff are busy with Covid.
Clearly they said they did not have enough staff to man the Nightingale Hospitals, so simply extra building capacity, even if they could in the timeframe will not do it.
Is there more room for more beds in the existing buildings, doubt it from what I have seen.
Spend less time in hospital so you recover at home with so called after care?
Very risky I would suggest, given the number of people who are re-admitted already.
December 9, 2021
Better question:
How many back room staff will be converted to front line operational staff including ambulance crews? Could we have both the actual numbers of people and amount of money converted to real jobs.
If we have an increase staff to increase capacity and productivity your question becomes irrelevant.
Same with other public services, there are enough police officers but they need to be in uniform 24/7 not backroom 9-5 weekend off or term time working hate crime jobs.
December 9, 2021
Two sentences. No detail.
Anything could be included under ‘tacking the backlog’.
We are none the wiser.
December 9, 2021
You should have asked how much that spending plan will impact on the following yearly budget deficits; hence, the debt to GDP ratio by the next election; the prime metric for any neoliberal Conservative government.
December 9, 2021
That seems to address those already on waiting lists, what about the well known failure of GP referring, and diagnostic measures which will be required to determine more joining the waiting list?
December 9, 2021
Next question: what will that £2bn actually be spent on ?
December 9, 2021
As it’s a quiet day for comments I’ll offer the headers for this interesting article from the Centre for European Reform:
THE COST OF BREXIT: SEPTEMBER 2021
In September 2021, UK goods trade was 11.2 per cent, or £8.5 billion, lower than it would have been if the UK had stayed in the EU’s single market and customs union.
£8.5bn in a month is a princely sum; over a year that’s £102bn. I think everyone here knows that I opposed Brexit. I suppose the question now is: what do we do about it?
December 10, 2021
It is just a guess.
Which doesn’t allow for the effect of Covid restrictions.
December 10, 2021
Trade throughout the EU has been disrupted.
Even in the USA. Amazing the effect of Brexit around the world.
December 10, 2021
Have you seen the drop in exports of Germany and they’re still in the EU.
December 10, 2021
well Will I didn’t know your opinion and really don’t care a fig. All the numbers are estimates, usually wrong – but I did point out a few times that due to the vile attitude by EU, BRITS would stop buying cars, this then joined in with Covid and the Green nonsense to mean that Germany’s production of many things has crashed. Hopefully we will continue to take the temporary pain of trading with EU and China, and get back to much more self production of what consumers want. Best wishes from Micky.
December 10, 2021
If one is to believe Kate Andrews’s article in The Daily Telegraph today, your item 2 should take priority over most others. She says that hospital bed numbers have fallen by 5,000 since 2019, despite the demands of the pandemic, and the money that has been showered in. I thought that the cry of the NHS was that they needed more capacity, not less. It is not the NHS that needs to be saved, but us from it.
December 11, 2021
He didn’t say if £2bn was all of the money (so they don’t know how it will be divided among services) and… what is “elective recovery”? To do with elective procedures (i.e. boob jobs etc)? That would be a terrible use of taxpayers’ money when there are so many other priorities.