News / Economy

‘UK National Health Service on brink of collapse’

Sunday, 20 September 2015 3:01 PM [ Last Update: Sunday, 20 September 2015 3:00 PM ]

The UK’s former health minister, Norman Lamb (file photo)

Britain’s former health minister warns the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) will crash, unless instant cash is injected into the healthcare system.

Norman Lamb says the NHS will crash within two years with catastrophic consequences unless the government orders a multibillion pound cash injection.

The stark warning comes amid mounting fears among senior NHS officials and local authorities that NHS and care services are approaching breaking point, according to the Guardian.

Lamb told the Observer that the conservative government was failing to admit the scale of problems.

He said an increasing number of private companies and other organizations contracted to provide care by local authorities are refusing to tender again because cash-starved councils, already hit by budget cuts of more than 40% since 2010, cannot pay enough to let them run adequate services.

Lamb says the result is that more elderly people in particular will end up in already overstretched hospitals, worsening the crisis.

The former minister noted that the ruling Tories’ promises to provide an additional £8 billion for the health service by 2020, on top of £2 billion extra pledged at the end of last year, are insufficient and too vague to reassure anyone.

“If the investment is not made upfront and in the early period of this parliament, you could see serious failures in the system,” he said. “The system will crash. Elderly people won’t get the care they need, and it will be people with mental ill health who suffer most, because that is where the squeeze always comes.”

This is while, the body representing more than 2,200 organizations providing home-based care, the United Kingdom Home Care Association (UKHCA), said that many of the biggest providers were considering handing back as much as half of their local authority business, the report added.

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