The budget must fund public services, not burden families
The Autumn Budget is the government’s chance to turn the page on the dismal economic legacy left by the Conservatives. Years of mismanagement has sent living standards plummeting, left our economy in tatters, and brought public services to their knees. From schools to our NHS to local authorities, we urgently need a boost for the people who make up the backbone of our communities.
But the burden of fixing this mess should not fall to the families that the Budget should be helping. Instead, I expect the Chancellor to look to the big banks, tech companies and the oil and gas giants to raise the funds needed to get our economy back on track.
It wasn’t just our economy that the Conservatives wrecked, but our NHS too. Our local health services are on the brink of collapse. The past government sent GP and hospital waiting times rocketing, staff vacancies spiralling and hospital buildings crumbling. In Bath, there have already been over 4,000 instances of patients waiting over 12 hours in A&E just this year. Getting seen quickly is often a matter of life and death – but the Conservatives’ legacy means that residents in Bath are having to wait for far too long in agony for urgent treatment.
A healthy economy requires healthy people. That’s why the government must use the Budget as an opportunity to winterproof our local health services to ensure that the NHS doesn’t spend another winter in crisis. I have called on the Chancellor to launch a ring-fenced fund of £1.5 billion, which will be allocated over the next four years, to build resilience in hospital wards, A&E departments, ambulance services and patient discharging.
Proper investment is needed in every corner of our NHS – this has never been clearer than in eating disorder services. Despite around 1.25 million people in the UK having an eating disorder, there is a considerable gap when it comes to investment in eating disorder research. Between 2015 - 2019, eating disorders only accounted for 1% of the UK’s mental health research funding. This is simply unacceptable.
Eating disorders have the highest mortality rates among psychiatric disorders, in part because of a lack of knowledge about how they are best treated, as well as overstretched NHS services. It’s also clear charities are becoming overwhelmed by increasing demand amid NHS capacity issues. The charity SWEDA in my constituency saw a 150% increase in people attending support and guidance appointments for eating disorders in 2023, in comparison to pre-pandemic figures. We should not be dependent on charities to plug the gaps in eating disorder services. In the Chancellor’s Budget, I’ll be looking out for a substantial commitment to eating disorder patients by adequately funding services and research to give patients the support they deserve.
Healthcare is not the only area of our public services at breaking point; our schools are also crying out for investment and support. I’m especially concerned about the lack of special educational needs (SEN) provision. The National Audit Office released a damning report last week which highlighted serious shortcomings in support for children with SEN. Despite the Department for Education making £10.7 billion available for high-needs pupils this year, there has been little improvement in attainment for children with SEN since 2019. Investing in education is the best investment we can make in our country’s future – it’s vital that the government does not overlook the golden opportunity in the Budget to properly tackle the funding crisis in our schools, especially for children with SEN.
The lack of financial support for SEN not only impacts children, teachers and parents, but local authorities too. In fact, the County Councils Network recently warned that nearly 75% of England’s largest councils could declare bankruptcy by 2027 due to SEN service deficits. This comes after the previous government disastrously left local authorities with a £2 billion shortfall in SEN funding.
When it comes to funding the schools and health services operating at the heart of our communities, local authorities are often best placed to understand and address the issues in our community. Bath & North East Somerset Council work especially hard to meet the needs of our city; it’s time they received the resources they need to deliver for our community. This is exactly what I hope to see in the Chancellor’s Budget today.
Wera Hobhouse is the Liberal Democrat MP for Bath and Chair of the Eating Disorders All-Party Parliamentary Group.
