DUBLIN // British prime minister Theresa May has been accused of misleading the public by insisting that the National Health Service will receive £10 billion (Dh45bn) over the next five years.
It comes as the NHS is struggling for funds and just months after pro-Brexit leaders promised that leaving the European Union would free up an extra £350 million a week for health care.
Soon after the UK voted for Britain to leave the EU in a June referendum, the NHS was told it would see no such funds. Instead, it will receive the £10bn spread over five years that the Conservative Party promised after its successful re-election campaign last year, Mrs May has said - £74bn less than if it were to receive £350m a week in the same time period.
But even the promise of £10bn is misleading, a bipartisan parliamentary committee headed by Mrs May's Conservative colleague Sarah Wollaston said last week.
The committee charged that the prime minister's "continued use of the figure £10bn" was "not only incorrect but risks giving a false impression that the NHS is awash with cash".
In a letter last week to Philip Hammond, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Ms Wollaston and her committee wrote that £3.5bn of the £10bn came from paring back health care spending in other non-NHS schemes.
Accounting for these and other cuts in other budgets, the real figure is closer to £4.5bn, the letter claimed.
Given the UK's ageing population, the NHS faces a crunch from two ends: fewer people to pay taxes to fund its budget, and more elderly people to care for. Between 2005 and 2015, the UK's population above the age of 65 increased by 21 per cent, while in the 85-plus age bracket, the population rose by 31 per cent.
"At the same time, after many decades of rapid growth, the NHS budget is now being held to around a 1 per cent increase each year as the government tries to reduce the budget deficit," said Mark Dayan, a policy analyst at the health care non-profit Nuffield Trust.
"These two factors together have made it very difficult for the NHS to keep providing the same services at the same standards."
Created in 1948, in the years after the Second World War, the NHS was for many decades the crown jewel of the UK's strong welfare policies.
But over the past three decades the service has run into repeated funding crises as economic growth slowed, health care costs escalated and NHS equipment became outdated.
The quality of service has declined accordingly.
In September, the NHS released figures that showed nearly 3.9 million people were waiting for non-essential surgeries such as hip replacements and cataract and hernia removals.
Since 2012, the service has aimed to treat 92 per cent of such patients within 18 weeks of referral. But as of July, it was treating 91.3 per cent of patients in 18 weeks, according to NHS data. This marked the service's worst performance in more than five years and translated to months of additional delay for thousands of people.
In accident and emergency departments, one in ten patients is forced to wait more than four hours, the self-prescribed NHS target. And although ambulances are supposed to hand over emergency cases to hospitals within 15 minutes, the number of patients made to wait longer has risen by 64 per cent over the last two years.
"The government themselves would agree that even with £10 billion, the NHS is still left in financially very difficult times," Mr Dayan said.
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