One in 11 people will need to work for the NHS under current plans, IFS says

But while some funding was put aside for training as part of the announcement of the plan, the IFS says paying these new members of staff has not been factored in, and will come at huge expense.

Should the plan be implemented in full, the number of staff employed by the English NHS would rise from around 1.5 million in 2021–22 to between 2.3 and 2.4 million in 2036–37.

This would be equivalent to average growth in the size of the NHS workforce of between 3.1 per cent and 3.4 per cent per year.

For context, it is estimated NHS staffing numbers grew by around 1.1 per cent per year between 2009–10 and 2019–20.

This would mean that by 2036-37 - the year the plan looks ahead to, 49 per cent of public sector workers would work for the NHS.

While the plans were broadly welcomed when they were announced, serious concerns have been raised about its reliance on “associate” roles, such as physician and anaesthesia associates - essentially less highly qualified and less well-remunerated – positions than doctors or consultant anesthesiologists.

The Government says these roles - which do currently exist in a limited capacity - will soon be regulated by the General Medical Council in a bid to ensure patient safety.

Moreover, the IFS study highlighted the shortfalls in budgeting for this new workforce.

It found: “While the plan included £2.4 billion of additional funding for the training of new staff, it did not consider the (much larger) medium-term implications of this large increase in staffing for the NHS pay bill, nor the required increase in other inputs if the NHS is to treat substantially more patients.

“This will mean difficult fiscal decisions at future Spending Reviews.”

Max Warner, research economist at IFS and an author of the research, said: ‘The publication of the NHS workforce plan and its detailed workforce projections is an important and welcome milestone for the NHS.

"We estimate that the plan might imply average real-terms funding growth of around 3.6 per cent per year for the NHS in England.

"That is by no means outlandish by historical standards, but would nonetheless require difficult fiscal decisions in the current climate of sluggish growth.

‘NHS modelling suggests that even these large staffing increases will only be “enough” to meet future demand if staff productivity can be increased by a highly ambitious 1.5 to two per cent per year.

"The risk of having a workforce plan but no similarly high-profile plan for capital, technology or management is that higher spending on staffing squeezes out other vital inputs, and makes those productivity gains all but impossible to achieve.”