What is really going on in politics? Get our daily email briefing straight to your inbox Sign up Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email

Theresa May will promise the cash-starved NHS an extra £20billion by 2023 to stop it falling apart over the next five years.

That will see today’s £110billion frontline NHS budget increase by more than three per cent a year.

But that is still nearly two per cent LESS than the health service would get if Jeremy Corbyn was PM.

In an exclusive interview with the Sunday Mirror, shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth says he would give the NHS an immediate £7.7billion plus more than £1billion for social care.

Over the coming 12 months the NHS will only get around half that - less than £4billion.

He said: “As people live longer they live with a more complicated set of conditions.

“That’s why we must have structures in place to provide whole person care.”

The PM hopes the money will buy off her Brexit rebels and stuff Boris Johnson’s leadership ambitions.

(Image: REUTERS)

The Foreign Secretary has been pressing for the extra £350million a week for the NHS he was ridiculed for promising on his Brexit battlebus.

Mrs May now says her £20billion trumps that as it is the equivalent to £600million a week in today’s cash terms.

Labour’s plan will be financed by tax rises on business and the top five per cent of income earners on more than £80,000 a year.

The Tories are coy about how they’ll pay for their proposals, which will not be announced until Chancellor Philip Hammond’s Autumn Budget.

They claim there will be a “Brexit dividend”, but stealth taxes such as freezing personal allowances and the 40 per cent top rate to draw more people into tax are on the cards.

As there will still be a shortfall Mr Hammond will have to borrow another £10billion to pay for Mrs May’s NHS 70th anniversary gift.

(Image: REX/Shutterstock)

Doctors are now to be asked to design a new ten year plan for the NHS.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said: “This long-term plan and historic funding boost is a fitting birthday present for our most loved institution.

“It presents a big opportunity for the NHS to write an entirely new chapter in its history.”

But Mr Ashworth said: “There’s a lot of talk about Jeremy Hunt being the longest serving Health Secretary.

“But the issue is not his survival. It’s the survival of the NHS.

“The NHS is reliant on the professionalism of its staff but Tory austerity has taken it’s toll.”

(Image: Getty)

Four million patients have had to wait more than 18 weeks for non-urgent ops and at the current rate that will rise to five million over the next four years..

The 2.5million who miss the four hour A&E target will grow to nearly four million by 2022 and the number forced to wait on trolleys is going up at the rate of 50,000 a year.

Labour are also planning reforms which will see the creeping privatisation of the NHS squeezed out.

Mr Ashworth said: “It creates poor quality care for patients and isn’t in the interests of taxpayers.

“We have seen cancer patients waiting for chemo left stranded on their doorsteps.”

(Image: PA)

Just £25billion was spent on healthcare 50 years ago. Now, in addition to the NHS £110billion, £20.8billion goes on local authority care.

That means 30p out of every £1 spent on public services is eaten up by healthcare.

But when the NHS was created in 1948 life expectancy was 13 years shorter.

People are living longer with a growing number of long-term chronic conditions such as diabetes, heart disease and dementia.

By the age of 65, most people will have at least one of these illnesses. By 75 they will have two.

And the average 65-year-old costs the NHS 2.5 times more than the average 30-year-old. An 85-year-old costs more than five times as much.

Over the next 15 years medics will have to cope with 4.4 million more over 65s and an extra 1.3 million aged 85 plus.

(Image: Getty)

Under the Tories the NHS has been starved of cash and the period between 2010 and 2015 saw its tightest ever financial settlement.

Britain spends less of its wealth on health than the European average, and we have fewer doctors, nurses and beds per patient than Germany, Sweden and France.

The new ten year plan will include preventing disease by reducing smoking and depression to save the cost of treatment in later life.

A report by think tank Pro Bono Economics showed the kind of savings taxpayers would make if mental health counselling was available in more primary schools.

Charity Place2Be spent £4.2million delivering one-to-one counselling to 4,548 children across 251 schools.

That generated potential savings of £25.9million - or £6.20 for every pound spent.