There haven't been any cuts. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan...

Spending on the NHS is increasing a rate that is below the rate of increase in demand (the gap is about 3% year on year IIRC). Informally you might say this is a cut. It's easier to communicate to an unsophisticated audience.

I guess you can restate "cut" to suit your point. I'd even accept "cut" if it was less money in real terms (i.e. after inflation). But I don't think you can define "cut" as "not giving the NHS all the money it asks for, even though it got more than last year".

Spending is increasing at a slower rate than demand: https://nhsfunding.info/underfunded/is-the-nhs-underfunded/

You can pedantically argue whether this is a "cut" or not, but that's not the issue. Nor is the issue how much the NHS asks for. The issue is there is less money per health-care-incident to provide care.

Please at least read the pages you quote.

> this is likely to have been driven in part by activities in response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, such as testing and tracing services and the implementation of the vaccination programme.

Yes, if we include the many billions spent on faulty test and trace and broken PPE -the corrupt spending that went to pals of the Tory party- we see an increase in health spending.

Guess what happens to the amount of health care funding if you ignore the corrupt spend on PPE?

Even if you ignore 2020 and 2021, the trend-line is still upwards. There's no reason to think it would have dropped without COVID happening.

There is no NHS in France or Germany, yet, the same phenomenon is observed. So, yes, deal with it, the common point is the COVID and the lockdown. Does it really require a high IQ to understand that closing hospital and doctors appointments for 2years will result in undiagnosed/untreated diseases ?!

One area that I think is interesting to look at, aside from overall budget, is bed capacity and nursing staff numbers.

According to Statista:

Bed capacity is significantly lower than at the turn of the century, but more damage was done there by Labour than the Tories [1].

The numbers of nurses has steadily increased in the last twenty years under both Labour and the Tories [2].

So if there are many more nurses per bed than there were twenty years ago, why is patient safety one of the issues they are currently in dispute with the government over?

I don't know the answer to this, but I think we need to know. It is, like teachers, that nurses are spending so much time on non-clinical bureaucracy that the don't have time to nurse?

[1] - https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img922/4302/M6SgVh.png

[2] - https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img923/7041/40e6JF.png

You reduce bed numbers by pushing less sick people out of hospital. This means that your two 6-bed bays now don't have 4 people who need minimal nursing, 6 people who need moderate nursing, and 2 people who need high level nursing. It means you have 8 people who need moderate level nursing and 4 people who need high level nursing.