Conservatives
The NHS in England would receive “the resources it needs – a minimum of £8bn in real terms over the next five years, delivering an increase in real funding per head of the population for every year of the parliament”. A further £10bn is pledged in capital spending. It would ensure that the NHS and social care system had all the health professionals “it needs” and it would train more homegrown medics. Backing the NHS’s Five Year Forward View and local sustainability and transformation plans (STPs) would lead to the controversial rundown of A&E and maternity units and changes to the roles of many hospitals. Any “necessary legislative changes” would be made to finally give STPs legal status. In addition, it would “review the operation of the internal market and make non-legislative changes to remove barriers to the integration of care”. GPs would provide seven-day access everywhere by 2019.
Labour
It would give the NHS in England £30bn extra funding over the next five years, mainly through higher taxes on those earning more than £80,000 a year, plus an unspecified additional amount in capital funding. An Office for Budget Responsibility for Health would be set up with a new regulator called NHS Excellence. STPs would be halted and reviewed, NHS privatisation reversed and the Health and Social Care Act 2012 repealed. The health secretary would once again be responsible for the NHS. The NHS pay cap would be scrapped and bursaries reintroduced. It also pledges to take 1 million people off NHS waiting lists by 2022, guarantee non-urgent hospital treatment within 18 weeks, tackle growing rationing of NHS care and ensure patients get faster access to new drugs.
Liberal Democrats
An immediate 1p rise on all rates of income tax would generate £6bn additional revenue to be spent only on NHS and social care services. It would end the public sector pay freeze for NHS workers, reinstate student bursaries for nurses, and guarantee all EU-born NHS and social care staff the right to stay in the UK after Brexit. Mental health spending would increase by an unspecified amount of the £6bn. No one would wait longer than six weeks for therapy for anxiety or depression. Health services would be integrated, partly through personal budgets.
Greens
The NHS would get an unspecified “immediate cash injection, to ensure everyone can access a GP, hospitals can run properly, and staff are fairly paid”. It pledges to “roll back privatisation of the NHS to ensure that all health and dental services are always publicly provided and funded, and free at the point of access”, via the introduction of an NHS Reinstatement Act. STPs would be scrapped, while single budgets covering health and social services would be introduced. There would be better care for people with mental ill-health, especially those in crisis.
