LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s finance minister Rachel Reeves will announce billions of pounds in funding for the National Health Service (NHS) in Wednesday’s budget that will go towards buying new equipment for hospitals and increasing the number of operations.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said tax rises will be necessary to rebuild Britain’s public services, pledging no return to austerity despite a difficult fiscal inheritance after Labour won a July election.
“I am putting an end to the neglect and under investment (the NHS) has seen for over a decade now,” Reeves said on Monday.
“We will be known as the government that took the NHS from its worst crisis in its history, got it back on its feet again and made it fit for the bright future ahead of it.”
The finance ministry said there would be 1.5 billion pounds ($1.95 billion) for new surgical hubs and scanners, and 70 million pounds for radiotherapy machines.
It said there would be enough funding to deliver an extra 40,000 elective appointments a week, including 1.8 billion pounds invested by the government since July.
Reeves will announce the final figure on Wednesday.
The state-run NHS has endured some of its hardest winters recently as it struggled to cope with backlogs in elective procedures delayed by COVID and industrial action.
Starmer has promised to deliver a 10-year plan to fix the NHS in England, after an independent report said it was in critical condition.
He has agreed pay deals with health workers, ending a series of strikes the previous Conservative government blamed for extending waiting lists.
The finance ministry said the extra funding would help the NHS meet a commitment that 92% of people wait less than 18 weeks to start treatment.
The British government runs the health service in England, and it is a devolved area of policy in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
($1 = 0.7705 pounds)
(Reporting by Alistair Smout, editing by Ed Osmond)
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