The NHS “doesn’t need more money” but should be buying millions more procedures and consultations from private healthcare firms, according to Reform UK’s deputy leader.

Richard Tice says the NHS’s problem is not funding but inefficiency. “Most of the people I talk to in the NHS say the NHS has got plenty of money,” he told The i Paper.

The comments from the 60-year-old, who does not deny he wants to be the next chancellor, come in a wide-ranging interview in which he also discussed the tax and spending cuts a Reform government would aim to make.

But it is his thoughts on the health service that Reform’s political opponents are most likely to seize on in the week that it extended its lead over Labour to a record 9 percentage points .

They see the NHS as a weakness for a party led

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