Meeting of the Parliament 19 February 2020
My apologies, Presiding Officer.
Under this Government, since 2006-07, the annual resource investment in health has risen by 62.9 per cent, and our draft budget for 2020-21 will take total health spending to more than £15 billion, which is a rise of 4.2 per cent over and above the demand that we recognised in our medium-term financial framework. However, under Labour’s manifesto, health spending would have been down by £1.4 billion in this year.
Investment must of course be matched with reform. While social care reform in England remains in the long grass, we have backed integration, not with warm words but through our partnership with COSLA and the additional resources that are proposed in the budget, which take our total investment in health and social care partnerships to more than £9.4 billion. Investment in our NHS and in health staff, who are our most valuable resource, is vital and is producing improvements. That is not happening as fast as we want, but there is real, tangible and sustainable improvement.
In the year to September 2019, the number of out-patients waiting more than 12 weeks was down by 14 per cent, while there was a 50 per cent reduction in patients waiting more than six weeks for scopes and an 18 per cent reduction in patients waiting more than six weeks for one of the eight key diagnostic tests.