Health secretary Sajid Javid has admitted it is “impossible to know” whether the NHS backlog will be cleared within three years, despite the Treasury pledging £6bn to help solve the problem as part of Rishi Sunak’s autumn Budget.
It is understood that £3.8bn of the funding will go towards getting the health service “back on track” following the Covid crisis, while roughly £2.1bn will be used for “digitising” the NHS.
Previous estimates have suggested that the sum offered may not be enough to clear the huge backlog in care, with figures showing that the number of people waiting for routine hospital treatment in England has hit a record 5.6 million.
More than £30bn of spending has already been committed across numerous announcements from the Treasury over the weekend, the largest of which being £7bn for transport infrastructure outside of London.
However, Mr Sunak admitted on Sunday that only £1.5bn of that £7bn would be new money as the chancellor conceded that much of the funding would go towards previously announced projects.
