Boris Johnson will tell cabinet colleagues that all experts are agreed on the need for an urgent financial boost for the NHS, as he warns that Conservative failure to act will result in Jeremy Corbyn winning the next election.

Allies of the foreign secretary suggested that he would not stop making the argument for more money – with a particular demand for £100m extra per week after Brexit – until Theresa May concedes.

They insisted the pressure was not simply about fulfilling the pledges painted on the side of the Vote Leave campaign bus. They said Johnson believed the issue was at the top of voters’ concerns and suggested he was frustrated that key advisers to the prime minister had indicated the Tories were too far behind Labour on the issue to make it worth an intense policy focus.

Q&A Does the UK have enough doctors and nurses? Show Hide The UK has fewer doctors and nurses than many other comparable countries both in Europe and worldwide. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Britain comes 24th in a league table of 34 member countries in terms of the number of doctors per capita. Greece, Austria and Norway have the most; the three countries with the fewest are Turkey, Chile and Mexico. Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, regularly points out that the NHS in England has more doctors and nurses than when the Conservatives came to power in 2010. That is true, although there are now fewer district nurses, mental health nurses and other types of health professionals. NHS unions and health thinktanks point out that rises in NHS staff’s workloads have outstripped the increases in overall staff numbers. Hospital bosses say understaffing is now their number one problem, even ahead of lack of money and pressure to meet exacting NHS-wide performance targets. Hunt has recently acknowledged that, and Health Education England, the NHS’s staffing and training agency, last month published a workforce strategy intended to tackle the problem. Read a full Q&A on the NHS winter crisis

“Boris believes that if the Tories are going to beat Corbyn at the next election they must make the NHS a top priority and deliver new funding,” said an ally. “Every poll conducted shows the NHS is top of swing voter concerns and every expert says it needs more money. The cabinet will have to act and the sooner the better.

“This isn’t about the referendum, it’s about delivering on the number one concern for the public and beating Corbyn at the next election.”

The foreign secretary is said to be frustrated by a suggestion from May’s chief of staff, Gavin Barwell, that the NHS is not necessarily a sensible target for Tories because they cannot catch up with Labour on the issue. That led to a decision from inside Downing Street to focus most heavily on school standards, the environment and housing towards the end of 2017. However, since then the NHS appears to have been added to the list.

Speaking at the start of a year in which the Tories face a challenge in London council elections, the friend stressed Johnson’s past success in the capital. “Boris has a track record of winning and knows the Tories simply cannot afford to concede the NHS to Labour, which is why he will continue to make this argument until it happens.”



Johnson will make the argument during a cabinet meeting on Tuesday where ministers will get an update on winter pressures facing the NHS. He hopes to attract the support of the key Brexiters Michael Gove, Chris Grayling and Penny Mordaunt, as well as the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt.

His decision to cite expert opinion could raise eyebrows among cabinet colleagues who campaigned to remain in the EU. During the campaign, Johnson’s leave campaign partner Michael Gove suggested Britain had had enough of the arguments of specialists.

Johnson has admitted in a Guardian interview that the Brexit dividend, which he believes will be recouped, will not be available until after a transition period ending in 2021.

But he believes the government should start making the increased payments he is demanding to the NHS from the start of Brexit in March next year.



Labour has been ramping up pressure on the government over failures in hospitals, with Corbyn and the shadow health secretary, Jonathan Ashworth, holding a rally this week demanding an emergency budget for the NHS.



Ashworth addressed Labour MPs at a meeting of the parliamentary Labour party on Monday, and was due to say: “The toxic privatisation agenda in our NHS has gone too far. Billions of pounds has flowed out of the NHS into private sector hands leaving a poorer service for patients.”

Johnson has been gearing up to press May for more funding for the NHS since he repeatedly promised that Brexit would deliver a financial dividend for the health service. Last week the foreign secretary angered opponents suspicious of his £350m figure by claiming it was an underestimate and that Vote Leave could have opted for a higher £438m a week.

Q&A Why is the NHS winter crisis so bad in 2017-18? Show Hide A combination of factors are at play. Hospitals have fewer beds than last year, so they are less able to deal with the recent, ongoing surge in illness. Last week, for example, the bed occupancy rate at 17 of England’s 153 acute hospital trusts was 98% or more, with the fullest – Walsall healthcare trust – 99.9% occupied. NHS England admits that the service “has been under sustained pressure [recently because of] high levels of respiratory illness, bed occupancy levels giving limited capacity to deal with demand surges, early indications of increasing flu prevalence and some reports suggesting a rise in the severity of illness among patients arriving at A&Es”. Many NHS bosses and senior doctors say that the pressure the NHS is under now is the heaviest it has ever been. “We are seeing conditions that people have not experienced in their working lives,” says Dr Taj Hassan, the president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine. The unprecedented nature of the measures that NHS bosses have told hospitals to take – including cancelling tens of thousands of operations and outpatient appointments until at least the end of January – underlines the seriousness of the situation facing NHS services, including ambulance crews and GP surgeries. Read a full Q&A on the NHS winter crisis

However, he has conceded that the figure used by his campaign was a gross one, and now says that £100m should be spent on the NHS.

A Downing Street source suggested May had made clear that the NHS was a priority. “Look at the budget: the NHS got a significant amount of money and although outcomes are improving we want to ensure that progress is secured for the future,” the source said.



The NHS England chief executive, Simon Stevens, has made clear there is not enough money to fund everything being asked of the health service. And Sir Malcolm Grant, the chairman of NHS England, said at a board meeting: “We should not set out blindly imagining that our staff can do everything. There are going to have to be tough decisions and trade-offs.”