The NHS repairs budget has been slashed by £1.1bn, in an unpublicised cut included in George Osborne's 2016 Budget.
The Chancellor did not mention the cut in his Budget speech, and the 30% decrease in funding was only uncovered following a Labour-sponsored review of the Budget by the House of Commons Library.
The capital budget of the NHS is used to fund repairs and replace out-of-date or broken equipment. The NHS was expected to be allocated £4.8bn to cover this area, but the Budget revealed the health service will only be receiving £3.7bn of capital budget,
It will cost the NHS an estimated £4.3bn to complete all outstanding maintenance work. This includes £458m of repairs classified as "high-risk", which could endanger patients' lives and wellbeing if they are not repaired.
An independent review by the Health Foundation revealed his planned cuts would actually cut the total NHS budget by 20% over the next five years.
The news follows the revelation, in a separate review carried out by the Liberal Democrats, that the NHS had been hit by a further £650mn of "secret cuts". These cuts were made by passing the burden for pension funding from the government to the NHS, reducing the amount of money available to fund front-line services.
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https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/budget-2016-george-osborne-cuts-ps1-1bn-from-nhs-repairs-fund-a6942301.html