Rishi Sunak should study the maths that have led to the crisis in the NHS - Yorkshire Post Letters

Rishi Sunak wants all 16–18 year-olds to study maths. Perhaps, given that between 300 and 500 people per week are dying waiting for admission to hospitals, he might study some statistics.

Average annual financial growth of the NHS since its foundation has been 3.3 per cent. Average growth under the Labour governments between 1997-2010 was 3.6 per cent.

Between 2001-2004, annual growth was 6.1 per cent, yielding an extra 7,500 consultants, 2,000 GPs, 20,000 nurses, 6,500 therapists and 1,000 more medical school places. By the end of the 2008 waiting times were reduced with a median wait of only five weeks.

Average annual growth under the Conservative governments since then has been 1.5 per cent. The waiting list in England for non-urgent care in hospitals has reached an all-time high of 7.2million people with 411,000 people having been waiting for more than one year.

The waiting list already stood at 4.4million prior to Covid. An NHS leader has been quoted as saying: “We have essentially had 10 years of managed decline. This is not a Covid problem. This is an austerity problem.”

Between 2010 and 2022 when compared to the cost-of-living, pay for consultants declined by 14.5 per cent, for doctors in training by 14.1 per cent, for midwives by 13.5 per cent, for nurses by 10.2 per cent, for all doctors by 7.4 per cent and for ambulance staff by 3.9 per cent. During this time private sector pay increased by 0.6 per cent.

In the year to June 2022 in England, one in ten paramedics and one in nine nurses (40,365) left the NHS. There are 46,800 nursing vacancies in England. With sickness and other absences, there are 17,000 nursing unfilled posts every day in the NHS.

The NHS has been broken over the last 12 years. Rishi Sunak would do better to study the maths himself.