Schools and hospitals ‘will get worse no matter how much ministers spend’

The performance of schools, hospitals and the criminal justice system will still be worse by the end of this decade than they were before Covid, despite billions of pounds of extra funding provided by Labour, an audit has concluded. In a highly critical study of public services, the Institute for Government (IfG) warned that ministers risked entering a “doom loop” where more and more money was spent without the public seeing tangible improvements in medical care, teaching or reduced crime on the streets. Most commented 1 Forgotten particle may hold key to how universe survived big bang Science 248 comments 2 Lily Allen: ‘I felt I was a vehicle for male pleasure — not my own’ Music 242 comments 3 ‘We got a call yesterday. Birth mum’s had another baby’ Parenting 32 comments 4 Doctor Who and me — Russell T Davies on his life in TV Books 25 comments 5 Budget 2026 predictions: when is it and what could be announced? Economics 235 comments It concluded that Andy Burnham now had “limited time, funding and capacity” to make any “meaningful improvements” to public service performance before the next election and called on him to focus on long-term reforms rather than sticking-plaster fixes. Andy Burnham at the Labour conference last month ADAM VAUGHAN/EPA The report highlighted areas across the public sector where Labour had squandered the opportunity to measurably improve public services over the long term. Top stories 1 16 of the best safaris in Africa Africa In health it said Sir Keir Starmer’s decision to abolish NHS England had been an “egregious” example of a policy that had “little clarity of purpose” or “clear plan for what it was supposed to achieve”. Advertisement It warned that it had damaged relations with staff and left the NHS “drifting” at a time when it should have been working to deliver priorities like improving performance of A&E, cutting waiting times and keeping patients out of hospital. leon neal/getty images The report said A&E performance had not improved since the election while waiting lists for children’s community services were “rising uncontrollably”. More than 25 per cent of patients are waiting a year or more for care compared with 14 per cent in 2024. Top stories 1 Prepare now for the inheritance tax mess coming for your pension Tax In schools it found that the proportion of hours taught by teachers who did not have a qualification in the subject had increased to almost 13 per cent last year — higher than at any point since 2016. It also warned that ministers’ plans for improving schools hinged on “optimistic” forecasts about the government’s ability to slow the growth of education, health and care plans (EHCPs), for children with special needs or disabilities, which attract additional funding. “Not only does that threaten the viability of schools reforms, but the deliverability of the government’s entire spending envelope,” it stated. Advertisement In the criminal justice system it found that ministers had increased the number of police working in local neighbourhoods but this would lead to more arrests — piling pressure on the courts and prisons. A prisoner leaves HMP Brixton during the second phase of the government’s early release programme Joshua Bratt for The Times Overall the IfG warned that across key metrics public services would still be worse at the time of the next election than they were before Covid. “All else being equal, performance is likely to improve in most services compared to 2024. However, the baseline was so low in 2024, with services dealing with so many backlogs in demand, that those relatively small performance increases are unlikely to return services to pre-pandemic performance levels — let alone those seen in 2010, when Labour last left office,” they wrote. “[Financial] settlements are unlikely to be sufficient to improve performance by as much as the government has promised.” Stuart Hoddinott, associate director of the institute and the report’s author, said Labour’s inheritance in 2024 had been “truly awful” but they had also made “missteps”, particularly around the NHS. Advertisement “Burnham has less than three years before the next election to demonstrate progress and on current trends most public services will still be performing worse than they were before the Covid pandemic, already a low benchmark,” he said. The report came as the former cabinet minister Darren Jones launched a trenchant attack on senior Whitehall civil servants for making it harder for Labour to deliver results in government. Jones said the Treasury acted more like a bank than a finance department with little idea about whether the money it was providing was being well spent. He also claimed that Downing Street was a “sealed unit” that did not effectively collaborate with other parts of government to ensure that the prime minister’s will was imposed across Whitehall. “There are too many opportunities for the system to not deliver what ministers have asked for and you can only have so many things when you call them in every single week to say how are you going,” he said. Advertisement “I am worried about it. What happens is that a minister will set a political direction and rely upon the civil service to implement that and deliver it. The trouble is, especially when you are very busy as a minister there is not sufficient pressure on the detail or accountability for how this is being performed. “And if there is a reluctance to deliver change you have to push really, really hard for it to happen.”