NHS Workforce Expansion

Debate between Aaron Bell and Ashley Dalton

Tuesday 28th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Aaron Bell]

When Labour left office, more than 20,000 people were waiting over a year for elective treatment. Before the pandemic—this was not acknowledged properly—the number of people waiting more than 52 weeks for elective treatment had fallen by 95% in England, to just over 1,000. Those are the statistics. The hon. Gentleman can argue with them if he likes, but they are there in black and white.

As I said, it is interesting to see the lack of contrition about the state of the NHS in Wales, which is a complete mess. I will refer to that in detail later, but only yesterday the NHS Board in North Wales was put into special measures for a second time. I accept that there are challenges everywhere—in Scotland, Wales and England. Indeed, if we look at the comparisons across the continent, we can see that these challenges are international in nature, because everybody is recovering from covid, but I believe that this Government are tackling the challenges, and the workforce challenges, head on.

[Ashley Dalton (West Lancashire) (Lab)]

I am really glad that you have consistently raised the issue of covid. Could you suggest why it is that services such as the overnight children’s A&E at Southport and Ormskirk Hospital in my constituency, which was closed, allegedly due to covid restrictions, still remains closed to this day?

[Ashley Dalton]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.

[Aaron Bell]

I welcome the hon. Lady to her place and congratulate her on her recent election. I believe that her predecessor, Rosie Cooper, is now responsible for the issue that she has just raised, so perhaps she will have some luck if she speaks to her about that—[Interruption.] Have I got that wrong? I do apologise. By the way, I would like to pay tribute to Rosie Cooper, because I did not have the chance to do so when she left. She handled herself with great dignity in the face of some very unacceptable circumstances, and I pay tribute to her. I see several by-election victors on the Opposition Benches and I congratulate them all. I cannot speak exactly to the hon. Lady’s NHS trust. I am sure that if she writes the Minister or speaks to the NHS trust directly, she might get some answers as to what is going on in Southport, but if she will forgive me, I represent North Staffordshire.

Before I detail the work that the Government are doing, I would like to praise the work of everybody in the NHS—as the Opposition Front Benchers did—and particularly those in North Staffordshire who working in our hospitals and GP surgeries, our health visitors and clinical staff, and those who support those people. It has been a difficult winter—after a difficult few years—with covid and flu peaking simultaneously in December. I am pleased to report that the most recent figures from the integrated care board for Stoke and Staffordshire show that ambulance handovers hugely improved in February, compared with where they were in January, which was unacceptable, as I said in the House at the time. There has been an 8% increase in primary care appointments, compared with a year ago, with 73% delivered face to face—higher than the national average—and waiting times for surgery are falling, including for cancer treatment at the Royal Stoke Hospital. I pay tribute to everybody working at the coalface in the NHS, because I know what difficult work it is and we are all extremely grateful.

Turning to NHS workforce expansion, this Conservative Government are strengthening the NHS workforce. In hospitals we have 5,000 more doctors and 10,500 more nurses compared with October 2021. Compared with 2010, when the last Labour Government left office, we have 37,000 more doctors and 45,000 more nurses in our hospitals. We are also building up the workforce in primary care, recruiting 26,000 more primary care staff by March 2024—a target that is on track, unlike the target in Scotland. In Newcastle-under-Lyme, the number of doctors, nurses and other clinical staff based in GP surgeries has increased by 46% since September 2019. That is 55 additional full-time equivalent people. So we are seeing a growth in Newcastle-under-Lyme as well.

Workforce expansion is also about retention, as the Minister said. Times are tough for everybody, given what Putin’s war in Ukraine has done to inflation, but we have always prioritised NHS workers, especially those earning the least. A million workers received at least an additional £1,400 in their pay packets in the last year, and we accepted the independent pay review in full. During covid in 2021, we protected healthcare workers, giving them a pay rise during a wider public sector pay freeze and when private sector wages were falling. The full-time basic salary of a newly qualified junior nurse at the bottom of band 5 is now over £27,000, and experienced nurses or midwives at the top of band 6 are earning £40,588. On top of that, they get excellent pension provision, so we are looking after our NHS staff by paying them and retaining them.

More generally, we are also increasing the number of beds across the hospital estate. A new ward with 28 beds recently opened at the Royal Stoke University Hospital, but I know Tracy Bullock wants more, and I will speak to the Minister about that. We will need more beds for next winter, because the Royal Stoke is under incredible pressure, not least because of the burden of the New Labour private finance initiative contract that costs them a fortune to maintain. A previous Health Secretary ranked the worst 10 PFI contracts, and I believe that we were 11th or 12th at the time. The hospital has to live with that burden, and I raise it again with the Minister today; we want what went wrong before to be put right.