NHS: Staff Numbers after Covid-19

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Thursday 4th March 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD) [V]]

My Lords, the NHS workforce has been working flat out for a year now. Their dedication, professionalism and personal sacrifices have inspired the whole nation. Vacancies stood at over 100,000 before the pandemic. The NHS now faces a huge backlog of operations with an exhausted workforce and increasing levels of sickness absence. Moving forward, a fully funded workforce plan is critical and must take priority over reforms to NHS structures.

I recently spoke to two very senior nurses working in London ICUs, who told me that what they need more than anything was time off for recovery and additional nurses to provide pre-pandemic levels of patient care.

The recent report of the Public Services Committee, looking at the lessons of Covid-19, received compelling evidence that other European countries have considerably more critical care beds per head of population than we do. Does the Minister agree that, if the pandemic has taught us one thing, it is the need to adopt the rainy day principle and build spare capacity in for future crises?