NHS: Staff Numbers Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department of Health and Social Care
Baroness Jolly
Main Page: Baroness Jolly (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Baroness Jolly's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(1 year, 3 months ago)
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Lord Markham (Con)
The noble Baroness is absolutely correct: a workforce plan needs to be backed up with the physical real estate to deliver it. As noble Lords are aware, I am responsible for the new hospitals programme, which is part of that. In primary care, much of the long-term workforce plan is all about getting upstream of the problem in terms of prevention, and clearly we need to make sure that the physical real estate is there to support that. So the next steps will be to make sure that the capital meets the long-term workforce plan.
Baroness Jolly (LD)
My Lords, the NHS needs more recruits, but can the Minister tell the House where there are pressing shortages that adversely affect patient care and when he anticipates that the problem will be sorted?
Lord Markham (Con)
As I say, the long-term workforce plan puts this on the right footing, going forward. There are big increases in the number of staff, so it is not like we have not been working hard on this area already. By any definition, 63,000 more staff over the last year is a prime example of that. So we are addressing this, but I am not going to pretend to the House that this can be done once, lightly and quickly; it is part of a long-term programme, which the long-term workforce plan is all about.