NHS promises from all major parties are 'not physically possible'

Leading health officials have said promises made by the major parties on the NHS are misleading or impossible.

Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers, said politicians had ducked the big issues in regard to health and social care.

While Royal College of Physicians president professor Andrew Goddard said manifesto promises on the NHS were not ‘physically possible’ because of a lack of people in training to fulfil them.

They both said they have ‘grave concerns’ over how the major parties have campaigned on the NHS throughout the election campaign.

The Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats have promised above-inflation increases to spending on frontline care.

Labour has pledged to boost nurse numbers by 24,000 while the Tories have promised 50,000 nurses, but this would include almost 20,000 who are current staff.

But Mr Hopson said politicians on both sides had failed to offer ‘credible answers’ to the NHS’s toughest challenges and that the funding commitments they had made were disappointing.

He wrote in The Times today: ‘In reality, they go no further than restoring NHS funding growth to what they’ve been in past.

‘But it’s not just about money. Whilst we are pleased that parties are committing to increase staff numbers, it’s still not clear how that will actually happen.

‘The offers from the main parties have varied in scope and ambition, but none has developed a compelling worked-through and credibly funded long-term solution.’

He added there was a ‘worrying mismatch’ between what the major parties were promising and what their pledged funding would actually buy.

Mr Hopson said: ‘Bandying about large-sounding increases, based on five-year aggregate numbers, and saying “all will be well” is raising unrealistic expectations that the NHS will inevitably disappoint.’

Meanwhile Prof Goddard warned patients in hospital should get used to seeing their doctors less as the health service reached ‘crunch point’.

He told The Independent he was frustrated ‘by the proposed policies and promises’ by Labour and the Tories and their ‘relationship to reality and what actually is deliverable’.

The East Midlands gastroenterologist also said all three major parties had failed to address the looming workforce crisis among NHS doctors.

Labour and the Tories had used the NHS as a ‘political football’ he said, adding: ‘It’s really hard. In my life I have voted for all three main political parties.

‘I currently have internal conflicts on which way I will vote, there is no easy choice. None of the parties has thought about the long-term problems facing us.

‘The promises that have been made in the manifestos are not physically possible because we don’t have enough people training to fulfil those promises.

‘We need to think about where we want to be in 15 years’ time and plan for it now.’

He argued that Labour’s proposals to train 5,000 more GPs would result in fewer doctors training in psychiatry or emergency medicine.

The Tories’ plan to have 6,000 more GPs by 2024 was not feasible without ‘flooding’ the trainee system with overseas doctors, Prof Goddard said.

Currently, the NHS pays around £1.5 billion to train around 7,250 doctors a year, but the professor said this needed to double to about 15,000 a year, at a cost in excess of £3 billion.