"Labour will introduce a new ‘Fit For the Future’ fund to double the number of CT and MRI scanners, allowing the NHS to catch cancer and other conditions earlier, saving lives"
The government has provided some funding for more scanners, but it’s too early to know how the number of scanners has changed.
In October 2023, Labour said it would create a ‘Fit for the Future Fund’ of £171 million per year which “will provide enough funding to double the number of CT and MRI scanners in the NHS over a parliament”. We now know this gives it a deadline of mid-2029.
In its 2024 manifesto, the party said it would introduce the fund “to double the number of CT and MRI scanners”. It is likely that the pledge only refers to the NHS in England, since this is the part of the health service that the UK government directly controls, with the rest devolved to the governments of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
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In January 2024, NHS England began to publish the National Imaging Data Collection, which gives details on the number of scanners of different types that it holds.
The first publication showed that on 31 March 2023 NHS England had 587 operational MRI machines and 675 operational CT machines, making a total of 1,262 scanners of the type that the government has pledged to double.
This was updated on 29 November 2024, to show that there were 624 MRI machines and 723 CT scanners in the year to March 2024, making a total of 1,347 just a few months before Labour took office. To double this, the data will therefore need to show a total of about 2,700 in 2029.
It appears likely that the government has made at least some progress towards its target. The October 2024 Budget included £1.5 billion to fund “new surgical hubs which will help build capacity for over 30,000 additional procedures, and more than 1.25 million additional diagnostic tests (which use CT or MRI scanners)”.
The supporting document says this is definitely “for new surgical hubs and diagnostic scanners”, although we don’t know yet how much of this money is for scanners specifically, or whether it would be enough to put the government on track to meet its pledge.
We don’t know whether the government intends to provide more funding for scanners in future. This may become clearer when it announces its 10-year plan for the NHS next spring.
We’ve approached the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England for further details, and will update this page when we receive more information.
As we develop this Government Tracker we’re keen to hear your feedback. We’ll be keeping the Tracker up to date and adding more pledges in the coming months.
Full Fact is monitoring the government’s delivery on its promises
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Sir Keir Starmer, Prime Minister – 24 September 2024