Triple lock on NHS funding

Proposer
Floppy
State

Rejected

Vote Score

-1

Age

2517 days


@Floppy edited health.md - almost 7 years ago

Politicians cannot be trusted with the NHS. We will make the NHS independent, governed by a constitution created by a citizen-led constitutional convention.

NHS funding will be protected by legislation that binds the Government to committing an amount, decided by the constitutional convention, with increases linked to a measure such as GDP or inflation.

NHS funding will be protected by a so-called triple lock, where annual funding must increase at whichever is greater of

  • the rate of inflation
  • average wages
  • a fixed percentage to be decided by the constitutional convention

The NHS will not deny care to anyone for any reason, regardless of legal status, economic status, or nationality (for further details, see "Do I Treat This Immigrant?").

@Floppy edited health.md - almost 7 years ago

Politicians cannot be trusted with the NHS. We will make the NHS independent, governed by a constitution created by a citizen-led constitutional convention.

NHS funding will be protected by legislation that binds the Government to committing an amount, decided by the constitutional convention, with increases linked to a measure such as GDP or inflation.

NHS funding will be protected by a so-called triple lock, where annual funding must increase at least at whichever is greater of:

  • the rate of inflation
  • average wages
  • a fixed percentage to be decided by the constitutional convention

The NHS will not deny care to anyone for any reason, regardless of legal status, economic status, or nationality (for further details, see "Do I Treat This Immigrant?").

Floppy

@Floppy - almost 7 years ago

I missed out "at least", making it seem like it couldn't rise faster than those things if we wanted to.

Xyleneb

@Xyleneb - almost 7 years ago

Vote: ❎

I think that we should pledge to maintain the NHS budget in real terms. I don't think that we should offer the NHS a budgetary increase (in times of low inflation, by 2.5%).

We can't sustain an NHS that continues to consume so much money.

Floppy

@Floppy - almost 7 years ago

I see it more as a commitment to continuing investment in health, but yes, at some point presumably you'd have to remove the escalator. I avoided setting a specific percentage here partly for that reason.

Xyleneb

@Xyleneb - almost 7 years ago

Ahh, right. Well if wages go up 2%, then should the whole NHS budget go up 2%?

EDIT: Yes I would say that going up in any terms outside of inflation is probably not the same as in real terms, thereby providing a budget increase which you'd have to cover the costs for.

ghost

@ghost - almost 7 years ago

Actually, no, the wording on this is pretty awful.

Vote: ❎

Floppy

@Floppy - almost 7 years ago

Point taken re wages and other things. Triple lock isn't relevant here perhaps, this was a bit of reaction to all the talk of pension triple locks during the campaign. Let's scale this back a bit:

I'd like to find a way to improve this so that funding at least has to stay the same in real terms, i.e. track inflation. But of course the budget could go down for good reasons, or go up. I want to say that proper real budget changes aside, NHS budgets should increase with inflation. Any thoughts?

openpolitics-bot

@openpolitics-bot - over 6 years ago

Closed automatically: maximum age exceeded. Please feel free to resubmit this as a new proposal, but remember you will need to base any new proposal on the current policy text.