NHS must stop asking for more money, says Labour’s top health adviser

Alan Milburn served as Sir Tony Blair's health secretary between 1997 and 2001
Alan Milburn served as Sir Tony Blair’s health secretary between 1997 and 2001

The NHS must stop asking for more money, Labour’s top health adviser has said.

Alan Milburn, the former health secretary, said the health service was “drinking in the last-chance saloon” and needs to end its “more, more, more culture”.

Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, is set to appoint the former MP as lead non-executive director at the Department of Health as he looks to reform the NHS.

The health service was awarded £22.6 billion in extra funding in the Budget, which Rachel Reeves branded “the largest real-terms growth in day-to-day NHS spending outside of Covid since 2010”.

“People have got to stop thinking that the answer to the NHS problem is simply more and more money,” Mr Milburn told The Times.

He added: “The NHS has got to be weaned off the ‘more, more, more’ culture, and it’s got to recognise that if you’re going to do big dollops of resources, then that has got to be matched by a massive dose of reform.”

‘Dunkirk-spirit moment’

Mr Milburn said the health service faced an “existential” crisis and that a “Dunkirk-spirit moment” is required to improve it.

He served as Sir Tony Blair’s health secretary between 1997 and 2001 and oversaw improvements to waiting lists aided by a growing NHS budget.

“We are in a different fiscal climate to the one we were in in my day,” he said.

“If you’ve broadly got less resourcing than then, you’ve got to do more reforming than then.”

Mr Streeting is expected to make a speech next week outlining his planned reforms to the NHS.

Next year he will unveil a 10-year plan for the health service that could include the introduction of fines for NHS patients who miss appointments to save the health service around £1 billion a year.

The Health Secretary has previously said the NHS must “reform or die” and vowed to slash waiting lists and improve patient outcomes.

Within hours of Labour winning the election, Mr Streeting declared the NHS “broken” and pledged to “turn our health service around”.

In September, a government-commissioned report by Lord Ara Darzi, a surgeon and former health minister, found that NHS progress is going backwards for the first time in 50 years.

It said that progress made since the 1970s on deaths from heart disease and waiting times for treatment is now in reverse for the first time.