Health spending

Fact checks about increases and decreases in funding of the NHS, including the number of hospitals being built and record levels of funding

23 October 2024

Weight loss drug trial isn't being funded with public money

The five-year tirzepatide trial is being funded in full by a pharmaceutical company called Lilly, not the taxpayer.

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30 September 2024

How many people were treated in Covid-19 Nightingale hospitals?

There is some confusion online regarding the Nightingale hospitals and how many people they treated during the pandemic.

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26 September 2024

Was Keir Starmer right to claim agency staff cost the NHS ‘£5,000 a shift’?

The government hasn’t said what data his claim was based on, but he may have been referring to figures from a Labour party FOI request in 2022.

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11 September 2024

How does revenue from tobacco duties compare to the cost of smoking to the NHS?

Tobacco duties generate around four to five times as much money as smoking costs the NHS to treat.

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28 August 2024

NHS diversity officers don’t all make £96,000

The starting salary for an NHS diversity officer in England seems to be around £25,000.

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12 April 2024

Company owned by Sunak's in-laws hasn't been given a multi-billion pound NHS contract

The largest NHS IT contract ever awarded was £330 million and was not awarded to Infosys.

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25 January 2024

Bim Afolami overstates NHS in England as a share of ‘everything the government spends’

It seems that the Treasury minister made a common mistake by expressing NHS England as a percentage of all budgeted spending, not public spending as a whole.

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5 January 2024

How much do junior doctors earn?

First-year junior doctors earn about £15.53 an hour in basic pay only—but the average junior doctor earned at least about £44,500 in the year to September 2023.

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6 October 2023

Are doctors getting an above-inflation pay rise?

The BMA accused the chancellor of being ‘misleading’ over claims doctors had received an above inflation pay rise.

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4 October 2023

Rishi Sunak has not written off £14.9 billion in PPE fraud

Claims that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak wrote off £14.9 billion in PPE fraud are not correct. The figure may relate to stock impairments at the DHSC. The level of PPE fraud seems much lower.

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