HEALTH bosses will be spending £453million every day by next year — amid growing fears the NHS will swallow up all of the cash from the PM’s tax raid.
Experts said the Department of Health and Social Care is set to splash out 40 per cent of all government day-to-day spending from 2022.
The stark sums were laid bare as Tory MPs slammed Boris Johnson for raising taxes to their highest since World War Two and throwing “money down a bottomless pit” to bankroll the ever-expanding health budget.
A flood of policy experts and politicians warned there is a big danger the NHS will gobble up the £12billion a year raised by the National Insurance hike — leaving nothing for social care. Last night the National Insurance raid was passed in the Commons by 319 votes to 248 after potential rebels abstained. Only five Tories voted against the Government.
In angry Commons scenes yesterday afternoon, former Minister Steve Baker dubbed the move “socialist” and close BoJo pal Jake Berry declared it was a “Trojan Horse” for ever higher NHS spending.
Mr Berry, leader of the powerful backbench group of Northern MPs demanded answers on how waiting lists will be grappled, adding: “Show us the plan. We cannot measure the NHS by what goes into it, we have to measure it by what comes out.”
And he warned the new cash would not even go toward social care, branding the levy an NHS tax that will only ever grow.
In a bid to soothe Tory nerves, Health Secretary Sajid Javid promised to be vigilant for signs the NHS is wasting its huge windfall.
In a private meeting with MPs, he is understood to have told them he will hold the health chiefs’ feet to the fire vowing: “With the NHS we have to be watchful for waste and wokery that we just cannot accept.”
His comments came after NHS bosses published adverts for 42 new chiefs on six-figure salaries — days after a fresh push for a slew of new diversity tsars.
Mr Javid moved to soothe worries, adding: “Colleagues will rightly think ‘hold on a minute’ — how do we make sure the NHS will not just gobble up that cash and it is just going to go on to new fat salaries?
“That is absolutely the right question because that’s been the question on my mind all along — how we can make the NHS more efficient and focus on what people would naturally expect of it.” Tory MPs fear that by the time the medical backlog is cleared, the £12billion a year earmarked for social care will be impossible to divert away from the NHS.
One ex-Cabinet Minister told Trending In The News last night: “It’s a suicide pact. Whatever we raise it to, it will never be enough. I hate it.”
Party grandee Sir Roger Gale added: “Are you seriously going to say that having given billions of the NHS, we’re then going to take those billions away and give them to social care and not expect everybody to say you’re cutting the health service funding?”
Ex-Deputy PM Damian Green chimed in: “I cannot envisage the circumstances in which those at the top of the NHS will agree to shaving some of their own spending so a higher proportion of the levy can be diverted into care.”
Another Tory MP said: “The NHS bill always needs more. It is hard to see how this does anything other than kick that golden can down the road.”
The PM last night insisted he would not let the NHS swallow up all the cash — but was unable to say when the backlog would be cleared and the money reverted to elderly care.
He also could not promise people would not have to still sell their homes to pay for social care.
Mr Johnson told the BBC that nobody knows “the rate people are going to come back” to seek treatments missed during the pandemic. The Resolution Foundation think-tank revealed spending on the health service has massively ballooned over the past 15 years, from 28 per cent of all day-to-day public spending in 2005, to 40 per cent in 2022/3.
Out of a total daily spending budget of £408.4billion next year, the department is expected to get £164.8billion, the think-tank said.
Separate analysis by the King’s Fund think-tank suggests the department will get £153.7billion next year, and £142.8billion of this will be gobbled up by the NHS.
The Resolution Foundation said the tax bomb was billed as a way to fix social care but “should really be seen as principally about raising funds for NHS spending”.
It said the country is heading for an “ever more NHS dominated state”.
