UK Turning Into ‘National Health State’, Says Think Tank
17th June 2025
The think tank’s analysis of Reeves’s Spending Review estimates that by the end of financial year 2028–29, the health service will account for half (49 percent) of all day-to-day public services spending, up from 34 percent in 2009–10.
On Wednesday, the chancellor announced a record £29 billion funding injection, which the Treasury said will deliver on the government’s promise to cut waiting lists, improve patient care, and modernise services.
Resolution Foundation Chief Executive Ruth Curtice said in a statement, “Health accounted for 90 per cent of the extra public service spending, continuing a trend that is seeing the British state morph into a National Health State, with half of public service spending set to be on health by the end of the decade.”
The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) noted in its initial response to the Spending Review that the funding increase for the NHS was substantial, but questioned whether it will be enough to get the health service back to meeting its 18-week target for hospital waiting times within this Parliament, something which the think tank said was “enormously ambitious.”
The demand for health care, and the funding to pay for it when it is provided by the government, is bottomless. The NHS was a socialist pipe-dream from the beginning, and will eventually destroy British society.