Health spending, and the performance of the NHS, will feature prominently in the upcoming general election campaign. Many different factors matter for NHS performance and for the wider health of the population, but one important factor is the level of spending on health services. In this IFS...

Against a backdrop of increasing demands for health care, the National Health Service (NHS) has long sought ways to increase the number of staff available to provide care to patients. More doctors, nurses, midwives and health-care assistants (HCAs) mean that the NHS can deliver more, and...

One year ago, NHS England published its plan to tackle the backlog of elective care, which had surged following the onset of the pandemic. Since then, as widely expected, waiting lists for NHS treatment in England have continued to grow, increasing by around 1 million between February and...

There are marked differences in life expectancy between the regions of England, between the countries in the UK, and between the UK and other wealthy countries. Within England, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, life expectancy at birth was more than two years higher in London and the South East...

Policies that aim to reduce the prevalence of obesity have been high on the policy agenda for many years - see, for example, DHSC (2020) and Dimbleby (2021). Understanding the costs associated with obesity is important for informing policy. Bell and Deyes (2022) have recently produced what are,...

The 2020 NHS People Plan committed to providing flexible working opportunities to all NHS staff. An important component of flexible working is less-than-full-time (LTFT) working, enabling staff to balance paid work with other commitments. However, there is currently only limited empirical...

NHS waiting lists are likely to be a key issue in the forthcoming general election. The current government has made cutting NHS waiting lists one of its key priorities, while one of the Labour party's five national missions is to "get the NHS back on its feet", including by cutting waiting...

The Scottish Government's Budget for 2024-25 takes place at a time of particular uncertainty about the future funding environment. UK government spending plans both for the coming year and for later years seem likely to be topped up, but when and by how much is unclear. The current UK government...