Image: People's Assembly
David Cameron and George Osborne “leaned on” NHS boss Simon Stevens to cut his NHS funding request in half before the election, former coalition minister David Laws alleged in a new book this week.
Laws sets out how Stevens said the NHS needed £16bn to plug a funding shortfall – and Number 10 responded “you’ve got to be joking”. Instead, Laws says, number 10 “massaged the figure down to £8 billion with higher and totally unrealistic efficiency savings”. The £8bn 'spending pledge' became the centrepiece of Tory election pledges and Jeremy Hunt’s mantra – fending off any criticism with the story that he’s merely implementing “the NHS’s own plan”.
