Labour and the Conservatives would both leave the NHS with lower spending increases than during the years of Tory austerity, according to an independent analysis of their manifestos by a leading health thinktank.

Toby Helm www.theguardian.com 

The assessment by the respected Nuffield Trust of the costed NHS policies of both parties, announced in their manifestos last week, says the level of funding increases would leave them struggling to pay existing staff costs, let alone the bill for massive planned increases in doctors, nurses and other staff in the long-term workforce plan agreed last year.

The Nuffield Trust said that “the manifestos imply increases [in annual funding for the NHS] between 2024-25 and 2028-29 of 1.5% each year for the Liberal Democrats, 0.9% for the Conservatives and 1.1% for Labour.

“Both Conservative and Labour proposals would represent a lower level of funding increase than the period of ‘austerity’ between 2010-11 and 2014-15.

“This would be an unprecedented slowdown in NHS finances and it is inconceivable that it would accompany the dramatic recovery all are promising. This slowdown follows three years of particularly constrained finances.”

The trust added that the planned funding increases “would make the next few years the tightest period of funding in NHS history”.

Sally Gainsbury, senior policy ­analyst at the Nuffield Trust and a leading authority on NHS funding, said: “They will struggle to be able to pay the existing staff, let alone the additional staff set out in the workforce plan. It’s completely unrealistic.”

A Labour spokesperson, when asked about the Nuffield Trust’s analysis, said the party would “deliver the investment and reform the NHS needs”.

They added: “Our £2bn investment will deliver 40,000 extra appointments a week on evenings and weekends, double the number of scanners, 700,000 extra emergency dental appointments, 8,500 more mental health professionals, and mental health support in every school and community. We’ll pay for it by clamping down on tax dodgers, because working people can’t afford another tax rise.”

The state of the NHS has played a key role in the election so far. Rishi Sunak last year promised to bring down waiting lists from a record high of 7.2m but there are now 7.5 million people waiting for treatment – a figure that rose again last week.

Labour has promised an additional 2m appointments a year, but the NHS currently carries out an annual total of 92m appointments, tests and operations.

Labour plans to cut waiting list times with weekend clinics, using spare capacity in the private sector and doubling the number of scanners to deliver faster diagnoses. It says its plan will cost £1.3bn, paid for by a crackdown on tax avoidance, but it is a small proportion of the annual NHS budget for England of about £165bn.

The analysis will add to a growing sense that neither of the main parties is coming clean with voters about the true implications of their tax and spending policies.

Paul Johnson of the Institute for Fiscal Studies said that for Labour to deliver the change it is promising there would need to be more money on the table. “Labour’s manifesto offers no indication that there is a plan for where the money would come from to finance this,” he said.

The findings come as leading NHS figures call for a Labour government to get serious about reform and funding of the NHS within its first 100 days in office.

Former Tory MP and chair of the House of Commons health select committee Sarah Wollaston, who announced last week that she was quitting as chair of NHS Devon over attempts to impose more spending cuts, called for Labour to change rules on capital spending that punish trusts that overspend by slashing their capital budgets.

“It is particularly perverse that you punish people who need it the most and actually take away some of their capacity to get back on track,” Wollaston said. “Systems like Devon desperately need more capital to be more efficient.”

She said a Labour government also had to address public health issues and the need for more emphasis on prevention,which had been neglected by the Tories since 2010. “We can’t afford to wait,” she said.The row over NHS spending comes as fresh analysis shows that Labour and the Tories may be on course for their lowest combined vote share since the second world war.

The latest Opinium poll for the Observer also shows a shift away from the main parties. Labour has maintained a dominant 17-point lead over the Tories with less than three weeks to go until polling day. However, Reform and the Lib Dems are up 2 points each.

A Tory spokesperson said: “The Conservatives have taken bold action to cut waiting lists and secure the future of the NHS, with the total budget increasing by over a third in real terms since 2010 and our £2.4bn long-term workforce plan – the first of its kind – delivering record numbers of doctors and nurses.”

The Lib Dems will push a Labour ­government to adopt more radical policies on tax, welfare and bringing Britain closer to the EU, Ed Davey has said, amid growing expectations that his party is on course for a far bigger role in the next parliament.

Michael Savage www.theguardian.com 

In an interview with the Observer, the Lib Dem leader said that his ­party’s focus remained squarely on ousting Tory MPs via a tactical ­voting drive that he claimed could be the most successful ever seen.

However, with the Lib Dems rising in the polls and a cautious Labour party maintaining a double-digit lead, he said his party would use the next parliament to continue to fight for higher capital gains tax to pay for the NHS, a new youth mobility deal with Europe and an end to the two-child benefits limit – all of which Keir Starmer has rejected.

“We are a progressive, liberal party and we believe in investment in ­public services,” Davey said. “We believe in making taxes fairer, and we believe in really transformative environmental action. I think people who want to see that level of change in our country can vote Liberal Democrat knowing that we’ll have lots of Lib Dem MPs in the next parliament championing that.

“Frankly, if you want the change, I think we’re offering the most ambitious change. I even have Labour people saying that they’re really Labour people, but they hope we get lots of Liberal Democrat MPs in because they can hold the Labour party to account.”

It comes with the latest Opinium poll for the Observer showing that the Lib Dems have increased their vote share to 12%, with Labour down two points on 40% of the vote. Despite informal cooperation with Labour that has seen the parties steer clear of seats where the other is the stronger challenger to the Tories, Davey said his party would press a Labour ­government for more radical action once in power.

“I’ve been in opposition to a Labour government before and I’ve seen that we won the debate on many ­occasions,” he said. “That was great for a fairer society. Our manifesto is a ­programme we want to put in the next parliament. We’ll be ­campaigning on it, voting for it, developing it. If you are winning the argument, you can push the dial.

“On things like our relationship with Europe, the Liberal Democrats are passionately pro-European. It’s been a tragedy that we have seen the Conservatives poison that relationship with our closest friends and allies. Are we going to campaign for a better trade deal with Europe? Yes. Are we going to campaign for allowing young people to move across Europe with an agreement on youth mobility? Yes we are.”

Some projections have the Lib Dems on course to more than ­triple their current haul of 15 MPs, partly helped by voters backing them in order to remove the incumbent Tory. The grimmest recent Tory projections even narrowly have the Lib Dems as the official opposition. However, Davey said it would be a “historic mistake” to underestimate the Conservatives, despite some high-profile mishaps during their campaign.

“I just think people who want real change should be cautious about the polls,” Davey said. “The Conservatives are not going to give up. They’ve got more money than any other party. They’re going to spend it in the last few weeks on attack ads on social media. Get ready. I remember 2017 when everyone thought Theresa May was going to get a landslide. I thought she was going to get a landslide. I didn’t expect to get re-elected in 2017. Certainly, Liberal Democrats are not going to take voters for granted.”

Other senior party figures are concerned that the Tory warnings of a “supermajority” for Labour are aimed at winning back precisely the kinds of reluctant Tory voters that the Lib Dems had been trying to win over in southern seats, as well as those in the south-west. Davey said he believed his tactical voting plea was cutting through.

“We’re seeing tactical voting on a scale I can never remember, even back in 1997 and 2001,” he said. “We’re seeing it in the blue wall in the home counties, we’re seeing it in the West Country. It’s been phenomenal. This is very much an ABC election – Anyone But the Conservatives. The fact that we are the ones to beat the Conservatives in so many seats, I’m really grateful for people who are thinking about Labour, ­thinking of voting Green, [and] realising if they do, they’ll let the Conservatives in. It has a massive potential effect on the outcome.”

Davey has been enjoying a successful campaign, which has seen him combine policy announcements with increasingly bizarre stunts. This weekend, he is announcing a plan to cut cancer waiting times with a major expansion of radiotherapy treatment – part of his party’s pledge for urgent patients to start cancer treatment within 62 days. It is funded by an overhaul of both capital gains tax and tax breaks for banks amounting to £9bn.

“I lost my dad to cancer and my mum to cancer, so it’s been a huge part of my life,” Davey said. “Surely we should have the ambition to have among the best survival rates in the world. We’ve got some of the best ­scientists, it just needs to be prioritised.”

Labour and the Tories are on course for their lowest combined vote share since the second world war, as the latest Opinium poll for the Observer shows a shift away from the main parties.

Michael Savage www.theguardian.com 

With all the parties having now unveiled their election manifestos, Labour has maintained a dominant 17-point lead over the Tories with less than three weeks to go until polling day. However, Reform and the Lib Dems are up two points each.

It is a reversal of the trend seen at the last election, when the main parties were able to squeeze the support of their smaller competitors. According to Opinium research, support for the smaller parties dropped 10 points between the first and last poll in the 2019 campaign. So far, the total vote share for smaller parties is up five points this time round.

“Voters are turning away from the two major parties in a huge break with the trend seen in the 2019 general election campaign, when the smaller parties’ votes were squeezed,” said James Crouch, head of policy and public affairs at Opinium. “The biggest surprise is that both major parties are being hit, with Labour and the Conservatives down to their lowest share of the vote since Liz Truss was in office.”

It comes alongside analysis that the election points to historically low support for the two major parties. Elections researcher Dylan Difford found that according to current polling, the main parties were on course for their lowest share of the vote since 1945. He said that the elections that took place in the wake of Brexit could actually be the exception, masking a longer-term fall in backing for the big two.

“After the Brexit polarisation seen in the last two elections allowed the smaller parties to get ‘squeezed’, this represents a return to the pre-2016 trend of growing multi-partyism among British voters,” he said. “Regardless of a belief that first past the post will always push voters back to the big two, the increasing anger, frustration and distrust voters feel towards mainstream politics is fuelling this fragmentation across western democracies – and Britain is simply not immune.”

The latest Opinium poll also revealed a big hit to Rishi Sunak’s approval ratings. He now has a net rating of -40, with 20% approving of his performance and 60% disapproving. Keir Starmer’s ratings have also slipped, though less severely, to -3 overall.

Voters regard the last week as the worst of the campaign for the Tories. Two-thirds (65%) thought it had gone badly for them, perhaps reflecting the fallout from Sunak’s decision to leave D-day commemorations early and a difficult Sky interview with Beth Rigby.