Chart: New money for the NHS announced in November Budget

On 22 November 2017, the Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond delivered his first Autumn Budget, which included some specific measures on the NHS.

£6.3bn of extra NHS funding over this Parliament was announced. This is composed of £2.8bn in revenue funding (money for day-to-day health services) and £3.5bn in capital investment (money for buildings and equipment).

Of the revenue funding announced, £335m will be provided this year to help address winter pressures, £1.6bn will be provided in 2018/19 and £900m will be provided in 2019/20.

While providing some welcome relief for the NHS, the extra funding pledged falls well short of the amount that we estimate is required. As the Budget provided a total of £1.9bn in additional cash funding to the English NHS in 2018/19, around half of the minimum gap calculated by the Nuffield Trust, the Health Foundation, and The King’s Fund based on figures from the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR).

The new money pledged in the Autumn Budget will take the total Department of Health budget to £124.7bn this year (2017/18), £126.4bn next year (2018/19), and £127.2bn in 2019/20. These are real-terms figures, taking account of new estimates of inflation published alongside the Budget by the OBR.

We estimate that, on current plans, there would still be a gap of around £20bn in 2022/23. The government will have the opportunity in a future Spending Review to reduce this gap by setting out new plans for the rest of the Parliament. Further funding increases will be needed to reflect the scale of the pressures facing the NHS.