Public expenditure in health and social care Our submission to the Health Select Committee inquiry

Anita Charlesworth, Chief Economist at the Health Foundation, gave evidence to the Health Select Committee alongside representatives from the Nuffield Trust and the Kings Fund on 11 November 2014.

Our response argued that the NHS faces two major challenges. The first is the short-term financial gap. The second challenge is the longer-term financial pressures, coupled with the need to reform services to maximise productivity and ensure that the NHS is able to respond to the changing needs of an aging population with rising levels of long-term physical and mental health conditions. Following on from our recent report, More than money: closing the NHS quality gap, our evidence argued for:

• a transformation fund to finance the changes in the way health care is provided
• a coherent strategy for supporting all providers to deliver systematic and sustainable improvement across the NHS
• cross-party acknowledgement that the NHS (and care system) have a long-term funding challenge which can’t be filled by efficiency alone and the need for proper engagement with the public after the election, on a non-partisan basis, to decide how we want to pay for our health service so that it can continue to meet patients’ expectations for high quality, accessible care.