What now for the NHS? How the health service might have swung the election in Jeremy Corbyn's favour

Voters sent a clear message to Theresa May and Jeremy Hunt about their treatment of public services

The uncertainty this election result has provided is unlikely to make the situation any easier for the health service just yet (Getty)

Could Britain’s love of the NHS have brought Theresa May’s hopes of a majority crashing down?

The worst winter on record at A&E followed by repeated warnings over staff shortages, urgent funding shortfalls and patient safety after Brexit appear to have propelled the health service to the top of the public’s list of most important issues facing Britain today.

A hung parliament leaves huge uncertainty over who will be in power in the coming years, and the future of the NHS is no more predictable. But voters have sent a clear message to Theresa May and Jeremy Hunt about their treatment of public services and the staff who keep them up and running.

An exclusive poll for The Independent the day before the election found nine out of 10 people shunned the Prime Minister’s idea of a “Brexit election” and insisted that the vote should also be about public services.

Even if Ms May manages to form a majority, she will continue to face pressure over staff pay, planned ward closures and cuts to the Department of Health budget that impact other important aspects of healthcare, such as doctor training and public health initiatives, but are not ringfenced in funding provided to the NHS.

The Conservatives have promised an extra £8bn over the next five years for the health service, an amount policy analysts have called “deeply disappointing”. The Health Foundation has predicted this will create a funding gap of £12bn in the next four years when faced with increasing demand fuelled by an ageing population and the rising cost of new treatments.

Jeremy Corbyn said if he was elected, Labour would give “overworked and underpaid” NHS staff a pay rise after a 1 per cent freeze caused salaries to drop in real terms. Nurses, who claim to have seen their pay cut by 12 per cent over a decade, are considering a strike for the first time in history. Ms May’s evasion when asked about nurses using food banks and insistence “there’s no magic money tree” will have done her no favours.

Another Labour pledge to stop hospital closures targeted the controversial savings programme underway in 44 areas of England, cuts that campaigners say will harm communities and dismantle the health service as we know it.

On top of this, two days before voters went to the polls, a devastating leak revealed further cost-cutting plans – meant to be kept secret until after the election – involving extended waiting times, ward and service closures, and the withdrawal of public funding for some treatments, measures that one chief executive described as the most extreme and difficult to ever hit the health service.

Whatever the outcome of this week’s tussles to form a coalition, the health service is likely to suffer. Research from the Nuffield Trust found none of the major parties, including Labour, had pledged to spend enough money on the NHS in England to close its funding gap.

But debate over thorny issues at the heart of the political divide, such as plans to raise money by selling off disused NHS land and property, which some experts welcome but critics say is a cynical ploy to shrink and privatise the health service that consistently tops polls on what makes people proud to be British, may have been one step too far for many.

Mental health was also at the centre of the Tories’ manifesto. The party said they would “break the stigma” around mental health, promised 10,000 extra staff for services and said they would introduce the first new Mental Health Bill in 30 years. However, they did not allocate any extra funding for mental health services, which doctors and campaigners say are struggling due to local authority cuts and increasing demand.

Meanwhile, a third of children’s mental health workers have said their service is facing cuts or closures, and it was revealed last month that spending on mental health services is being cut in five regions of England, despite promises the NHS will invest an extra £1bn a year in them by 2021.

The last nail in the coffin for the Tories’ election ambitions may have been the one issue they thought would lead them to victory – Brexit. Throughout the campaign, in response to health-related challenges and questions, they had one stock response: it “depends on a strong economy”, which in turn relies on a “strong and stable” party to navigate the upcoming Brexit negotiations.

However, the looming prospect of a bill of an extra half a billion pounds when tens of thousands of British pensioners have no choice but to return to the UK for healthcare from EU countries where they are living, combined with fears of unsafe staffing levels as restrictions on free movement push doctors and nurses to leave Britain in their droves, turned hard Brexit into a life-or-death situation.

The challenges the NHS faces are copious, and the uncertainty this election result has provided is unlikely to make the situation any easier for overstretched hospitals and struggling services that thousands rely on. But by refusing to give the Conservatives free rein over the UK’s public health service, Britain has been clear about the standards of care it aspires to and expects.