NHS bosses are demanding an emergency injection of £3bn to cover unexpected costs, warning that without it patients will face longer waits and hospitals may ration care. The demand presents a fresh challenge for Chancellor Rachel Reeves as she seeks to fill an estimated £30bn hole in the nation's finances ahead of her budget next month.
Hospital chiefs said that without extra cash they would have to cancel weekend and evening surgery sessions, which provide faster care for patients on the massive waiting list. They also threatened to stop procedures of 'low clinical effectiveness', such as removing painful bunions, arguing they are not a good use of limited resources.
The £3bn is needed to cover the cost of NHS staff redundancies, strike action by doctors, and higher drug prices. The NHS is already due to receive £196bn of the £211bn health budget for England this year. Health service leaders argue these cost pressures were unexpected and have arisen since their funding settlement for 2025/26 was finalised.
Labour's pledge to cut NHS waiting lists will become even harder to deliver without the £3bn, according to the NHS Confederation and NHS Providers, which represent health trusts. The waiting list for non-urgent care within 18 weeks stands at 7.4m procedures and appointments, having risen again in each of the last three months after falling for six months.
The unprecedented joint plea intensifies tension in Whitehall over who should foot the bill for redundancy payments and rising medicine costs. The NHS's 42 integrated care boards (ICBs) in England were due to make up to 12,500 staff redundant by the end of the year. Chancellor Reeves recently rebuffed a request from Health Secretary Wes Streeting for £1.3bn in additional funding, offering only £650m, conditional on the Department of Health and Social Care absorbing the rising cost of drugs.
Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said: 'The threat from unbudgeted redundancy payments, higher drug prices and renewed industrial action risks derailing progress on key waiting time targets and the wider reforms that are essential to getting the NHS back on track.' One NHS trust chief executive noted that additional operating theatre lists 'are the easiest things to stop when money is difficult, but they have an immediate impact on waiting times.'
