NHS Workforce

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House recognises that the National Health Service is facing the worst workforce crisis in its history with a shortage of 9,000 hospital doctors and 50,000 nurses; condemns the Government’s failure to train enough NHS staff to tackle this crisis; regrets that, as a result, patients are finding it impossible to get a GP appointment, ambulance or operation when they need one; calls on the Government to end the 200-year-old non-domiciled tax status regime which currently costs taxpayers £3.2 billion a year; and further calls on the Government to use part of the funds raised to invest in the NHS workforce by doubling the number of medical training places, delivering 10,000 more nursing and midwifery clinical placements, training twice the number of district nurses per year and delivering 5,000 more health visitors to guarantee that the NHS has the staff to ensure every patient can access the care they need.

The NHS is facing the worst crisis in its history. Seven million people are waiting for NHS treatment, and they are waiting longer than ever before; 400,000 patients have been waiting for more than a year. Heart attack and stroke patients are waiting an hour for an ambulance, on average, when every minute matters. “24 Hours in A&E” is not just a TV programme; it is the grim reality facing patients in an emergency. Behind those statistics are people being held back from living their lives: people forced to give up work because they cannot stand the pain; young people, still bearing the scars of lockdown, unable to get the mental health support they need to step into adulthood; families losing loved ones for no other reason than that the NHS was unable to treat them in time.

My friend and colleague the shadow Leader of the House shared with me an email from one of her constituents. A patient with suspected cancer was urgently referred by his GP, which ought to mean being seen by a specialist within a fortnight. Four weeks later he had heard nothing. He phoned the hospital and was told, “two weeks currently means six weeks” and that he would be contacted, not seen, within the next two weeks. He has now had his appointment, during which the doctor identified cancerous cells. He has been told that he will wait up to eight months to have that cancer removed. He said that until waiting lists are down,

“more people will die unnecessarily from cancer. I hope not to be one of them.”

That is not uncommon. That is where we are. That is why Labour is today putting forward our plan to solve this crisis, make the NHS fit for the future, and get patients treated on time again.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Yesterday I spoke to a paramedic who had been with a patient with sepsis, waiting for two and a half hours to be taken in. There were 98 calls at that same Yorkshire hospital waiting to go in. Are we now post-crisis and in complete breakdown, and do we need Labour’s plans to come in now, and not have to wait?

[Wes Streeting]

I strongly agree with my hon. Friend. As the Leader of the Opposition has said, the NHS is not on its knees; it is on the floor. How many times were we told during the pandemic that restrictions were needed to stop the NHS falling over? It has now fallen over, and for the first time in its history people no longer feel certain that, when they phone 999 or arrive at A&E, they will be seen in time. It is the first time in our country’s history that people have not felt confident that emergency medicine will be there for them when they need it.

The Conservatives blame the crisis in the NHS on everything from the weather to the pandemic, and even NHS staff. Of course there is no doubt that the pandemic has made things worse, but the Government—the Conservative party—sent the NHS into the pandemic with 100,000 staff shortages. They spent a decade disarming the NHS, before sending it into the biggest fight it has ever faced. They cannot pretend that the NHS was well prepared. The problem for the Conservative party is that people are not stupid. Their memories are not that short. They know that the NHS was struggling to treat them on time before the pandemic, and they know who is to blame.