NHS Workforce Expansion

Debate between Aaron Bell and Andrew Gwynne

Tuesday 28th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

I commend the powerful contributions from my hon. Friends the Members for Stretford and Urmston (Andrew Western), for Wakefield (Simon Lightwood), for Bristol South (Karin Smyth), for Birkenhead (Mick Whitley), for Easington (Grahame Morris), for Blackburn, for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) and for Putney (Fleur Anderson), as well as the hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper). We also heard speeches from the hon. Members for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Aaron Bell) and for Mansfield (Ben Bradley), although most of the parliamentary Conservative party seem to be absent today.

Before he became Chancellor, the right hon. Member for South West Surrey (Jeremy Hunt) sent an email in which he addressed Labour’s NHS workforce plan. He said:

“Smart Governments”—

chance would be a fine thing with this lot—

“always nick the best ideas of their opponents.”

It has been interesting to watch those on the Government Benches tying themselves in knots to try to unpick our workforce strategy when they know that their Chancellor privately supports it and will, in all likelihood, be forced to swallow his pride and nick it sooner rather than later. They do so to try to mask the depressing truth: they have no plan and have not had one for years.

The NHS has a current shortage of 9,000 hospital doctors and 47,000 nurses. Staff are at breaking point and patients are being failed on an unprecedented scale. Some 7 million people—let that sink in—are waiting months and even years for treatment. Heart attack and stroke victims are routinely waiting over three hours for an ambulance. Patients are finding it impossible to get a GP appointment when they need one. The system is in crisis and the Government will not even admit it, let alone address it. I do not know what cloud cuckoo world the Minister who opened this debate is living in, but it is not the one that my constituents live in and I suspect it is not the one her constituents live in. The reality is that they have cut medical school places and wasted precious time trying to force through an unworkable and unethical Bill to sack striking nurses. They have had 13 years and the best they can do when faced with an acute workforce shortage is threaten to sack NHS staff, an idea that would be farcical if it were not so dangerous.

In the absence of a coherent Government strategy, there are already rumblings on the Tory Back Benches about the future of the NHS. Just a few months ago, a former Health Secretary said he thought that the NHS should start charging for A&E and GP visits. The absolute brass neck of it! To neglect a service for 13 years, fail to train the necessary staff, systematically mismanage it, and then pretend there is no alternative but to charge patients money to fix the mess they made. Not on Labour’s watch. The core principle of the NHS—a publicly funded service, free at the point of need—is non-negotiable. The problem is not the NHS; the problem is how it has been managed by this out-of-touch and out-of-ideas Government.

It is worth saying it over and again: Labour has a plan to build an NHS fit for the future. We would double the number of medical school places to 15,000 a year; double the number of district nurses qualifying each year; train 5,000 new health visitors; and create 10,000 more nursing and midwifery placements each year. We would train 8,500 mental health professionals and put hubs into the heart of our communities, so that people can access vital mental health treatment within a year. That would come alongside a 10-year strategy for change and modernisation within our NHS. It would be funded by abolishing the non-dom tax status, because patients need treatment more than the wealthiest need a tax break. I hope that in her response the Minister will give clarity on why the Government have decided to side with the non-doms rather than the nurses.

[Aaron Bell]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andrew Gwynne]

I will not give way.

I appreciate that scrapping the non-dom tax status might be awkward for the Chancellor’s relationship with his next-door neighbour, but I fail to see how he, or indeed any hon. Member on the Government Benches, can justify inaction. In fact, I fail to see how anyone can look at the state of our national health service and vote for non-doms over NHS staff. On that, I will give way to the non-dom-loving hon. Gentleman.

[Aaron Bell]

I would like to inquire whether the Labour party takes donations from non-doms, because the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Chancellor have refused to rule it out. Does the Labour party take donations from non-doms?

[Andrew Gwynne]

The point is that we will tax them. I do not know what the hon. Gentleman is getting at. Perhaps he should give an intervention on something he knows about, rather than something he does not. Siding with the non-doms is the position of this Tory Government.

When the Minister stands up to speak, she will reheat the lukewarm excuses from a Government allergic to accountability. She will blame the pandemic—we have heard it before—even though waiting lists were at a record high before covid hit these shores. She will blame striking NHS staff, conveniently ignoring that her Government do not have the decency even to talk to staff about pay. For months, she could have averted the strike action. She will blame anyone but herself and her Government. She will not mention the 13 years they have had in power. Instead, she will talk as if she has only just started on the job. “A plan is coming,” she will say, while this rudderless Government flip-flop around behind the scenes and patients continue to wait in agony.

Why should the people of this country have to settle for such mediocrity? The NHS is an institution that, if run properly, can and should be the envy of the world. Things do not have to be this way. The last Labour Government left office with the lowest waiting times and the highest patient satisfaction on record. That golden legacy has been torched by the Tories. I do not trust the arsonists to put out the fire, and neither do the British public.

If after telling Conservative MPs to vote against our plan, the Chancellor does decide to nick our workforce strategy, my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) and I will be delighted, because it will prove once and for all that there really is no point in this clapped-out Government if all they do is dither, delay, U-turn and nab Labour’s policy anyway.

In closing, I suggest that it would be much better for this zombie Government to move out of the way, call a general election and let the next Labour Government get on with the job of rebuilding our country after 13 years of Tory managed decline. Until then, Labour’s message to patients is clear: the cavalry is coming. We will give the NHS the staff, the tools and the technology that it needs to thrive. That will come alongside a relentless mission to improve patient standards and reform the systems within the NHS that are currently failing patients. We will build an NHS fit for the future; we have done it before and we will do it again. I commend our motion to the House.