Comment by cs02rm0
11 hours ago
The NHS consumes about half of all day to day public service spending. It is singular in its ability to suck spending out of UK government.
11 hours ago
The NHS consumes about half of all day to day public service spending. It is singular in its ability to suck spending out of UK government.
That seems like a lot. Can I ask where you got that figure? Is "day-to-day" denoting some kind of specific budget?
I just tried to Google it and their AI responded with "The NHS and social care account for roughly half (49%) of all day-to-day public service spending controlled by the Westminster government.", linking me to a report from the The King's Fund [1].
But on reading that report, it seems to say only that 49.5% is the cost of staffing the NHS from its own budget, which it states as £205 billion in 2024/25 - that's more like 20% of the year's public spending [2]. Which seems more in line with what I had assumed.
[1] https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/insight-and-analysis/data-and-c...
[2] https://obr.uk/docs/dlm_uploads/BriefGuide-M23.pdf
Out of all day to day government spending on services (health, schools, police, courts, etc), the NHS consumes about 40% of departmental expenditure limits [1]. Although it is pre-covid and the picture has worsened significantly since then, this BBC article is quite good too at examining the different figures [2].
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/public-spending-sta... (Diagram in section 2.2) [2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-42572110
It was widely covered at the time of the Spending Review last year, based on government figures.
Day-to-day is the routine, required cost of running the state, without long term infrastructure spending.