The Guardian view on NHS funding: no platform for Boris Johnson | Editorial

The foreign secretary may be grandstanding, but there is a need for more money, invested in making healthcare sustainable

The foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, has been parading in the headlines for a week now, mostly on matters that are no part of his departmental brief. In the 24 hours before today’s cabinet meeting, he and his allies were briefing that he would demand an extra £5bn a year for the NHS. It did not go to plan: slapped down by the prime minister, afterwards it was suggested he was told to stop briefing; in the end no figure was even mentioned. But then the intervention was about Mr Johnson’s ambition, not the NHS. He is playing politics with the health service to enhance his own standing. Nothing new there.

Yet he is right about two things. The state of the NHS is doing grave political harm to the Tories: that is borne out by every recent polling report. And there is an urgent need for more cash. The difficulty is that, across the UK, every part of the health service is under such pressure that when the Treasury does dole out a little extra, it ends up – as a report on sustainability from the National Audit Office showed last week – papering over the cracks instead of making the health system work better.

Continue reading... January 23, 2018 at 11:57PM