The BMA has accused the Government of ‘papering over the cracks’ in the NHS, after the budget failed to make any significant investment into healthcare.

Association council chair Tom Dolphin questioned the Government’s commitment to securing the future of the health service, in the wake of yesterday’s budget delivered by chancellor John Healy. 

Framed as a financial plan aimed at addressing the cost-of-living crisis and navigating global economic turmoil, the budget outlined only a limited number of measures targeting healthcare.

These include an additional £190m to the NHS to assist with meeting the demands of winter pressures, and £100m to assist with the expansion of medical robotics and robot-assisted surgery.

The budget’s lack of focus on healthcare comes at a time when the NHS continues to contend with a backlog in unmet care and rising patient demand, as well as a repairs and maintenance backlog in the NHS estate, which stands at over £16bn in England alone.

The delivery of the budget also comes in the wake of the Government announcing its plans to recommend a sub-inflationary pay rise for all doctors for 2027/28, and ahead of planned industrial action among consultants in England and all secondary care doctors in Northern Ireland next month.        

Responding to the chancellor’s plans BMA council chair Tom Dolphin said that the budget had singularly failed to offer any solutions to the many long-standing problems facing the health service such as staff pay and the need for capital investment in infrastructure.

He added that earmarking additional funding for ‘winter pressures’ when many of these where now year-round challenges in the NHS, demonstrated a lack of ‘meaningful action’ on the part of the Government.

He said: ‘For a government that claims to put the NHS at the heart of its priorities, this budget falls worryingly short. The failure to set out meaningful action to tackle crumbling buildings or ensure we have enough doctors to meet future demand raises serious questions about the government’s commitment to the health service's long-term future.

‘Winter funding buried within the budget document is something, but the NHS faces these pressures year-round. Temporary fixes merely paper over the cracks, doing little to bring about the systemic change needed to take the service off life support.

‘Just this week, consultants in England announced plans to strike over soaring workloads, repeated real-terms pay cuts and too little time to improve the NHS for patients and mentor the next generation.

‘They, like doctors across the workforce, want to see the NHS flourish. With no significant investment in the health workforce, how does the Government intend to resolve this dispute, keep clinicians in the NHS, and build a health service that both supports staff and delivers for patients?’

Other measures related to healthcare contained within the budget include plans to commission an independent review into AI in healthcare and how use of the technology can further boost productivity in the NHS.