The upcoming Budget is expected to include measures to address various issues in the NHS, according to multiple newspapers. The Guardian reports that the funding will go towards reducing waiting lists, with plans for more surgical hubs and radiotherapy machines to enable an additional 40,000 appointments a week. Chancellor Rachel Reeves describes the health service as “broken but not beaten” and hopes to revive it.
The Daily Mirror attributes the NHS’s current difficulties to “14 years of Tory neglect” and believes the funding pledge provides hope to save it from disaster. In addition, Reeves suggests that more tax rises will be required in the future to fully fix the NHS, although many tax hikes are expected in the Budget already.
Meanwhile, Health Secretary Wes Streeting believes the new funding will not solve the real problems of the NHS, as quoted by the Daily Mail. He also stresses that the extra money will only “arrest the decline” of the health service, and there is no simple solution that can fix it overnight.
The i warns that charities may be forced to redirect funds away from crucial services to make cutbacks if the increase in national insurance for employers goes ahead. Charities and other volunteer organisations have written to Reeves stating that the sector is currently in crisis due to rising costs and falling funding.
Elsewhere, the Financial Times reports that Volkswagen is planning to shut down at least three factories in Germany, cut tens of thousands of jobs, and reduce pay by 10% to cope with intense competition from China. Lastly, the Metro details a case where a student used AI technology to produce indecent images of children to sell to other paedophiles online, leading to an 18-year jail sentence
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