https://fullfact.org/health/spending-english-nhs/
"Looking at the wider UK, the amount spent on health has been increasing over the long-term. That’s true whether it’s expressed in cash, cash adjusted for inflation, per person, or as a proportion of the size of the economy."
Population growth puts pressure on public services. The British people have been asking for reduction in population growth for a long time, partly out of concern for the state of the NHS, yet of course have been repeatedly denied by the EU and their own political classes. 4 years after voting to leave the EU largely to get a grip on the ever-increasing cost of public services they still haven't been allowed that.
Doctor and nursing salaries are pretty low in the UK
They're extremely high. The average pay for specialist consultants in the NHS is £120,000 or approximately 6x the average salary. This is dramatically higher than in say, Germany, where specialists earn 80,000 Euro on average. That's £71,600 or a bit less than 60%.
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=average%20salary%20for...
https://www.medscape.com/slideshow/2019-uk-doctors-salary-re...
if management is diverting capital expense money to salary increases, they are doing a poor job of it.
They've done an excellent job of it. From 2010:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/8206972/Billion...
"Billions of pounds spent on improving NHS hospitals has mostly gone on staff salaries while productivity has fallen over the last decade, a key National Audit Office (NAO) report has found."
"Between 2000 and 2009 the NHS workforce grew from 1.1 to 1.4 million - almost a 30 per cent rise. That included an extra 12,500 consultants, whose average pay rose from £71,900 to £120,900 over the same period - a 68 per cent increase. Doctors' pay rose by 48 per cent, nurses' and midwives' by 36 per cent and managers' by 34 per cent"
Health costs have been rising everywhere in the world and this has little to do with population growth (that's actually good because young people pay taxes), but more with rising life expectancies and the resulting average age. Every country has been experiencing the same trend (the US being an exception likely because of privatized healthcare): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Germany and those country have pretty different population developments.
Also you are comparing a Facharzt salary to a consultant, that's not a fair comparison. You should compare to a specialist and look what do they earn in the UK? £40,037 to £74,661. https://www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/explore-roles/doctors/pay-d...
That looks awfully similar to what a Facharzt earns (actually with the current rates the German earns significantly more more): 70.000 – 95.000 Euro https://www.praktischarzt.de/arzt/gehalt-arzt/
Please, just stop this. Departments asking for more money than they know they'll be allowed and then getting less is a universal truth of organisations, both governmental and corporate. It's called negotiation. Being given more money than you had before is not, and never will be, a "cut" in the English language. That word has a precise meaning and it simply doesn't apply here.
Likewise the NHS wasn't asked to find 20 billion in "cuts". That doesn't even make sense. You can't increase your own budget by reducing it. They were told that if they really needed that much they would be expected to find it through increased efficiency. Keeping a check on NHS waste is a key function of elected governments which voters expect them to fulfil, simply writing them blank cheques has been tried before and didn't work (as in costs went up, but healthcare outcomes didn't or didn't by anywhere near as much).
Health costs have been rising everywhere ... more with rising life expectancies and the resulting average age
And the NHS budget has been rising too.
Also you are comparing a Facharzt salary to a consultant, that's not a fair comparison
Alright, fair enough, then focus on the original statement - doctors and nurses get anywhere between good and extraordinarily good pay relative to the average salary in the UK. There are doctors in the UK earning significantly more than the Prime Minister, and their pay went up significantly during the last Labour government (not sure about this one, didn't look, but I assume pay inflation has been only slightly lower).
The point is that significant amounts of the money given to the NHS ended up being spent on increased OpEx like salary increases, rather than CapEx like capacity increases or efficiency improvements. Obviously the NHS must raise salaries at least in line with inflation, and really more in line with global healthcare inflation to avoid brain drains. But the idea its hospitals are run down because evil central government keeps cutting its budget is just far wrong.
Doctor and nursing salaries are pretty low in the UK, if management is diverting capital expense money to salary increases, they are doing a poor job of it.