This is “health week” on the Downing Street media grid – but for Rishi Sunak, it’s a familiar one step forward, one step back on the NHS. Although the nurses have ended their strikes, consultants have joined junior doctors in walking out, so there will be a total of seven days of stoppages next month.
Sunak will trumpet a workforce plan for which the NHS has been waiting for years, saying the 15-year blueprint will give the service the certainty it needs. All very welcome, but the devil will be in the detail of the Treasury’s long-term funding commitment; it blocked previous calls for an independent forecast of the number of doctors and nurses would need to train in the future.
Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, should take the advice of the former health select committee chair who supported this much-needed proposal – ie, himself.
