Warning of 'Medieval' Levels of Healthcare Inequality

Britain's "medieval" levels of health inequality are having a "devastating" effect on the NHS, experts say, with the health service estimated to be spending as much as £50bn a year on the effects of deprivation.

- Josh Halliday

Rising rates of child poverty have led to a growing burden on hospitals, with the knock-on cost to the NHS comparable to the annual defence budget. One senior NHS figure said they were seeing "medieval" levels of untreated illness in some of Britain's poorest communities, including people attending A&E "with cancerous lumps bursting through skin".

Another said hospitals were witnessing a "chilling" trend of vulnerable people, young and old, deliberately self-harming to secure an overnight stay. Concern has also been raised about rising rates of "Dickensian" illnesses, including scabies, rickets and scarlet fever.

The disclosures are revealed as part of a months-long Guardian investigation into the effects of deepening poverty on a "broken" NHS.

Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, this month unveiled a £29bn real-terms increase in day-to-day NHS spending - up to £226bn by 2029 - rising to almost half of all non-capital public spending by the government in that time.

Wes Streeting, the health secretary, has pledged to direct billions of pounds of extra NHS funding into poor areas by banning hospitals from overspending and overhauling the formula used to decide the levels of funding GP surgeries receive.

This Thursday he will unveil the government's 10-year health plan, which will include radical plans to transform the NHS from a service primarily focused on treating illness to preventing it. However, NHS trust leaders are warning that cuts to other key areas - and long-delayed plans to reform social care and tackle child povertywill leave hospitals and GPs having to "deal with the fallout".

There is also unease about how Streeting's ambition to shift the health service from treatment to prevention squares with the deep cuts to regional independent care boards, which are under pressure to axe as many as 12,500 jobs this year.