Treasury blocks Boris Johnson's plan to clear NHS backlog

A multi-billion-pound plan to tackle the NHS backlog has been delayed after the Treasury blocked an announcement due to be made on Monday.

The National Recovery Plan for the health service had been the subject of detailed discussions over the past week involving Number 10, the Treasury, the Department of Health and the NHS.

Health officials were expecting it to be announced by Boris Johnson and Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, on Monday as evidence of the Government’s determination to tackle delays in treatment owing to the Covid pandemic, which have left a record six million patients on waiting lists.

However, it has emerged that the Treasury refused to sign off the plans, with sources citing concerns over value for money after deadlines for hitting treatment targets slipped as a result of the omicron surge.

It comes amid reports of growing tensions between Downing Street and the Treasury.

Last week, Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, appeared to distance himself from the Prime Minister by telling a press conference he would not have made claims that Sir Keir Starmer had failed to prosecute the paedophile Jimmy Savile.

Adding to the Prime Minister's woes, the number of MPs to have revealed publicly that they have submitted a letter of no confidence in his leadership or called for him to stand down has reached 15.

Five Number 10 aides also resigned in recent days in the wake of the "partygate" scandal.

One NHS leader at the weekend suggested that the Treasury may be reluctant to sign off big spending plans amid uncertainty over how long Mr Johnson will remain in office.

Matthew Taylor, the chief executive of the NHS confederation, tweeted on Sunday: "Increasingly getting the sense that Johnson now faces the same (but more intense and short-term) challenges Tony Blair had in his third term, namely that HMT is loath to agree to any No 10 plans involving money, as the Chancellor sees these as opportunistic and wasted on a dying administration".

However, a senior source insisted the delay was down to disruption caused to the NHS by the omicron surge, which meant hospitals would not now be “able to deliver quite as much as quickly as it was thought it could three months ago before the variant arrived.”

“That needs to be reflected in the national recovery plan. I am sure the Treasury would wish to double check whether the NHS was sufficiently up to the mark. So it’s less political, more the Treasury doing its job of holding the NHS to account.”

'We want value for taxpayers' money'

A government spokesman said: “We of course want value for taxpayers money and any delay is a working through of final details.”

The Government has already provided an extra £5.4billion to the NHS to combat Covid up to April. 

The Spending Review proposed an extra £5.9billion of capital to support elective recovery, diagnostics, and technology over the next three years. This includes £1.5billion towards elective recovery by expanding capacity through new surgical hubs.

On Thursday, Mr Sunak repeatedly refused to rule out a leadership bid if Mr Johnson were to be toppled by Tory MPs.

The next day, Mr Sunak used an article in The Sun to argue that the Conservative Party had always been “the party of sound money” and would “always continue to be on my watch", adding: "that's the only kind of party I’m interested in."

Downing Street later insisted that relations between Mr Johnson and Mr Sunak were "good".