Ahead of the SR next week, my long read today looks at where the £22.6bn extra cash chancellor Reeves added to health spending in England for this year has gone. A thread >>

Me in the FT on the economic imperative behind this week’s move to abolish NHSE www.ft.com/content/4331...

And this is the year before (2022/23) when the 98 out of 205 reported a deficit. It’s got progressively worse because the funding has got progressively tighter, not because NHS managers have become progressively less good at their jobs

The government will be keen to present this overspending as an NHS management problem. Sure there will be some egs of that, but this is the spread of deficits in the last year for which they are accounts: deficits are the norm, and reported in 55% of all NHS trusts

Regionally, the deepest overspends in 2023/24 and the steepest declines since the previous year were in the North West and Midlands, with the North East and Yorkshire also seeing rapid deterioration >>

That overspend for the year 2023-24 was equivalent to 0.9% of NHS trust income for the financial year and basically returned trust finances to the same parlous state they were in on the eve of the pandemic >>