The share of the public who believe that the NHS will be there for people when they need it has plunged over the past 16 years, a new study has found.
Between 2008 and 2024, the share of Britons who agreed with this view declined from 82% to 66%, Kings College London and King’s Business School data suggests. Around one in five (18%) people now doubt that the NHS will care for them when they need it, double the 9% who thought so in 2008.
The release of the study comes as new statistics reveal the dire state of our national health service.
A total of 307,500 people in England had been waiting more than a year to start routine hospital treatment at the end of May.
Overall, an estimated 7.6 million treatments were waiting to be carried out at the end of May, the latest statistics show – down slightly from September 2023’s record high (7.77 million), but still nearly double the 2017 total.
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As faith plummets, some Brits are just avoiding engaging with the health services at all. Half the population say they’ve decided against seeing an NHS GP about a health condition in the last year.
This “faltering belief” in primary care is a major cause for concern, said Bobby Duffy, director of The Policy Institute at King’s College London.
“A third of those who didn’t contact their GP because they didn’t think they’d get through disagree that the NHS will be there for them, almost twice the level we see across the population as a whole,” he said.
“Increasing resources to frontline GP services is therefore a vital challenge for the new government to address, not just to deliver better and more efficient care, but to help restore confidence in the NHS as a whole.”
Around a third (37%) of those who didn’t contact their GP say it was because they thought their condition wasn’t very serious or that they could treat it themselves – the top answer given – but similar proportions say they did so because they didn’t think they’d be able to get an appointment (32%), that they wouldn’t be able to get through to the GP practice on the phone (30%), or that waiting times would be too long (28%).
Not seeking appropriate help has health implications. Of those who considered contacting their GP but didn’t, 45% report that their condition is about the same or worse since they thought about seeking care.
“Of course, some of these people may then need hospital care, which might have been prevented if they had seen their GP earlier,” said Dr Sam Van Elk, lecturer in management and organisation at King’s Business School.
The new Labour government has pledged to increase the proportion of NHS funds going to general practice.
Speaking earlier this week, health secretary Wes Streeting said he wanted to “shift the focus of the NHS out of hospitals and into the community” to “fix the front door of the NHS”.
Last year, almost 61 million GP appointments took place more than two weeks after being requested. Less than 10% of the £165bn NHS budget in England is spent on primary care, but Streeting wants to divert billions to GPs.
“I’m determined to make the NHS more of a neighbourhood health service, with more care available closer to people’s homes,” he said. “Because if patients can’t get a GP appointment, then they end up in A&E, which is worse for them, and more expensive for the taxpayer.”
Fixing the NHS is an urgent priority for most Brits. In May, an IPSOS poll showed that 35% of the public name the NHS as the most important issue facing Britain – more than any other issue, including inflation, economy, housing, and immigration.
