Money cannot continue to be poured into the NHS, the shadow health secretary has said, as he compared the head of the health service to Louis the 14th.
Wes Streeting told the NHS Providers’ annual conference in Liverpool there was a risk the NHS would become the state owing to how much it costs the taxpayer.
He said: “There is no route out of the crisis in the NHS that requires simply spending more money”, adding that the Department of Health and Social Care accounts for 42% of departmental spending.
He told delegates: “I like Amanda Pritchard (NHS chief executive) very much, but we’re in danger of making her Louis the 14th – ‘l’etat, c’est moi.’”
Louis the 14th reigned France from 1638 – 1715 and is associated with the saying “L’État, c’est moi” (the state, it’s me).
I think the NHS has to think really seriously about how it spends taxpayers' money and how sustainable it looks if it continues to grow and grow— Wes Streeting
Mr Streeting later added: “When you look at the NHS today, as it stands as a proportion of public spending and the size of the state, I think we should be anxious for two reasons.
“There is a real risk that the NHS becomes the state and sometimes I hear people suggesting that the NHS should do things that go well beyond the boundaries of what I think a health system ought to do, to pick up slack in other parts of the public sector.
“Secondly, when money is tight, as it is and as it’s going to be for the foreseeable future, every penny that goes into the NHS is potentially a penny that could have gone into schools, into policing and criminal justice, into tackling child poverty.
“And so, we can’t have a situation where, because we know that the NHS sits at the top of public concerns… we just assume that we can continue to get more money out of the public at the expense of other public services.”
He said the case he would have to make to Rachel Reeves if she becomes chancellor is “Why is this investment in the NHS going to be better spent and more impactful than investment in other very worthy causes?”
“So, for that reason, I think the NHS has to think really seriously about how it spends taxpayers’ money and how sustainable it looks if it continues to grow and grow.”
