NHS funding boost must be accompanied by reforms, Alan Milburn tells Boris Johnson

Boris Johnson should learn from mistakes Labour made over the NHS and ensure that his investment in the health service is accompanied by reforms, Alan Milburn has said.

Last month, Mr Johnson unveiled plans to sink £12 billion a year into the NHS, funded by a 1.25 percentage point hike in National Insurance contributions.

Mr Milburn was the Labour health secretary from 1999 to 2003, during which time Tony Blair announced a £12 billion increase in health spending. He said that if he were in power he would reverse plans by Matt Hancock, the former health secretary, to bring more health spending under ministerial control.

He told of his frustration when he found that, nine months after tipping billions into the NHS, waiting times kept going up and productivity was falling.

Mr Milburn told Friday's Chopper's Politics podcast, which you can listen to using the audio player above: "You only really get the money to work if, alongside the resources, you're doing the right reforms. The answer is that the money does help, but it's not enough. And that's when the big reforms happened.

"We introduced foundation trusts. We got the private sector into the NHS to work alongside the public sector. We gave more choice to patients. We paid more for the hospitals that were doing more rather than paying everyone the same.

"My worry about what is going on today is that I don't see the same plan for reform from the current government."

Mr Milburn said more decisions had to be pushed to local hospitals and primary care providers to ensure the money was well spent.

He added: "If I was offering advice to the Government, I would say you can't possibly run an organisation as large as the National Health Service, employing almost one and a half million people, from an office in Whitehall. It's a fool's errand. It won't work."

A source close to Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, said: "Previous governments have provided funding without reform or reform without funding. We are clear that both are needed to make sure the NHS delivers the very best service for the people of our country.

"We are determined to ensure every pound of taxpayers' money is well spent and delivers."

Listen to Christopher Hope's full interview with Alan Milburn on Chopper's Politics, The Telegraph's weekly political podcast, using the audio player above, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.