£1.1bn for ‘around the clock’ electives promised by Labour

A statement said integrated care systems would be told to use the funding to “run a weekend or out of hours service equivalent to 100 per cent of weekday activity” year-round, for diagnostic, daycase and outpatient appointments.

Labour also this weekend pledged to “double [the number of] scanners and rescue NHS dentistry” as part of a £1.6bn rescue package for the NHS, which it said would be funded by abolishing the non-dom tax status.

NHS Confederation and NHS Providers welcomed the pledge, but also stressed the importance of resolving the doctors’ pay dispute, which Labour is yet to provide a substantive answer to, and said a capital funding plan was also needed.

Labour said £1.1bn of the pot would be used to fund overtime shifts to “deliver an extra two million operations, scans, and appointments in the first year”.

The package was announced today by Labour leader Sir Kier Starmer at the start of the party’s annual party conference in Liverpool. 

It would pay for “staff overtime rates to work evenings and/or weekends and to increase hours at short notice through NHS staff bank networks”, to get the NHS working “around the clock to cut waiting lists”.

The statement added: “The funding will be enough to make sure that every integrated care system can run a weekend or out of hours service equivalent to 100 per cent of weekday activity for day case elective surgery, outpatient clinics and diagnostic investigations for 52 weeks of the year.”

The funding for integrated care boards would come with “clear expectations of increased activity to ensure return investment”, it said.

The statement said its plan would also “see neighbouring hospitals pooling their staff and using shared waiting lists, so they are working more efficiently together and making the best use of available capacity”.

Speaking on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Sir Keir conceded NHS doctors would still probably earn “more in the private sector” at weekends – but insisted similar schemes had worked elsewhere in the country.

NHS bosses: Funding pledge welcome but what about resolving the strikes?

Confed CEO Matthew Taylor said that NHS leaders would welcome the “funding boost”, although noting the NHS was “already a 24/7 service”.

He added: “Right now, the single biggest limiting factor for why the NHS cannot perform even more elective activity is the ongoing strikes, which saw 120,000 appointments cancelled last week.

“The NHS is under-staffed and over-stretched so there has to be a plan to bring this industrial action to an end.”

NHSP boss Sir Julian Hartley said attempts to cut the record list were “of course welcome”, but warned underlying issues like vacancies and burnout would need to be addressed, and industrial action resolved.

Sir Julian added: “Labour’s plan needs to be part of a broader strategy that includes workforce growth and retention together with investment in healthcare infrastructure to ensure lasting improvements for NHS patients and staff alike,” he said.

Streeting: ‘We will double number of scanners’

The waiting list announcement followed shadow health secretary Wes Streeting announcing Labour’s “fit for the future fund” yesterday.

The fund would provide “an extra £171m a year [to] would provide enough investment to double the number of CT and MRI scanners in the NHS over the course of a Parliament,” Mr Streeting said.

Announcing the policy on Saturday, Mr Streeting told the Times the NHS was in the grips of an “existential crisis”. He added: “Unless it modernises and reforms it will die, not just because of the immediate crisis of the worst waiting lists in the history of the NHS but the longer-term challenges we face in terms of our ageing society, the prevalence of chronic disease.

“When you compare the NHS to other health systems around the world we spend too much money in the wrong places getting worse outcomes.”