Government raided £1bn from NHS budget for maintenance and repairs just to keep the lights on

Last Updated: February 15, 2018By

The NHS budget for modern scanning equipment, IT upgrades and building maintenance is instead being spent on keeping day-to-day services running [Image: Getty/iStockphoto].

Time and again the Tories have sworn to us that they are properly funding the National Health Service – and time and again their own figures prove them liars.

If the service was properly funded, they wouldn’t be raiding the budget for essential modernisation to pay for “high risk” repairs, without which there would be “catastrophic” equipment failures or major disruption of care.

That’s just the most serious repairs – not the everyday.

It’s just like the 1980s and 1990s all over again. The Tories are running our health service into oblivion and lying to us about it.

The Government raided £1bn from NHS funds to keep services running this year, Treasury papers reveal. The money had been earmarked for maintenance and repairs of ageing NHS buildings and equipment,

NHS funds for essential modernisation shrank by 8 per cent in 2017-18, despite the Treasury pledging £500m for equipment like state-of-the-art scanners and IT upgrades.

The raids were permitted even though official figures show hospitals need to spend £1bn just for “high risk” repairs, which if left unaddressed could lead to “catastrophic” equipment failures or major disruption of care.

Source: Government raided £1bn from NHS budget for maintenance and repairs just to keep the lights on


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3 Comments

  1. Barry February 15, 2018 at 6:50 pm - Reply

    Well they have to pay the PFI companies an arm and a leg to change a light bulb, this is the outcome of 30 years of using a bad idea to build hospitals

  2. 4foxandhare February 15, 2018 at 8:38 pm - Reply

    Thanks very much Mike.

  3. rotzeichen February 16, 2018 at 8:55 pm - Reply

    It’s all part of their agenda and it’s neatly going to plan. American corporations are sitting on the sidelines just waiting for the green light to go.

    People need to understand the only way we will stop this madness is to get rid of every Tory in sight. They are selling the ground from beneath our feet, and when they wrap themselves, as they always do, in the Union Jack, we can remind them of all the foreign countries running our public services which we are having to subsidise.

    You really just couldn’t make this stuff up!

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