We were very clear at the last election that we would have had an emergency Budget to put every penny that the NHS needs into its funding.
I was talking about the reduction of NHS spending as a proportion of GDP. In terms of real funding, the House of Commons Library has shown that, if spending as a percentage of GDP had been maintained at Labour levels, by 2020, £20 billion more would be being spent on the NHS each year. That demonstrates the scale of underfunding that we have already seen and just how tough the coming years are going to be. That is not to
mention the deep cuts to adult social care, which have piled the pressure on to hospitals, and the £22 billion-worth of so-called efficiency savings that this Government have signed up to. I have yet to meet anyone who works in the NHS who thinks that efficiencies on this scale are possible without harming patient care.