Brexit: Nursing Staff

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Tuesday 27th June 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord O’Shaughnessy]

I am afraid the noble Lord is mistaking cause for correlation in this instance, and let me explain why we think that is the case. The General Pharmaceutical Council introduced language testing in November 2016; it had experienced no significant drop-off in applications from EEA member countries after Brexit but before that point and a big downturn in applications after that point. So it is language testing; it also happened with the GMC as well when it introduced language testing. I know this is something that the noble Lord supports—he said as much in a debate on this very issue in 2015—because it is an issue of safety. That is why language testing has been introduced. I would like to say, however, that of course we value the work of EU staff who come here, and, indeed, all nursing staff. As the Prime Minister set out yesterday, we want them to stay and have offered a generous package to allow them to do so, and there are more EU nurses here than there ever have been.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, the Department of Health’s own modelling predicts that there will be a shortage of 40,000 nurses by 2026. My own local hospital has 60 nurse vacancies, and I am sure other noble Lords have similar examples. What do the Government propose to do to avoid the NHS becoming unsafe because of these nursing shortages, given that some nurses are already being asked to stay on at the end of 12-hour shifts in order to fill gaps in the roster?

[Lord O’Shaughnessy]

I thank the noble Baroness for giving us the opportunity to talk about the fact that we have increased the number of nurses and health visitors by nearly 5,000 since 2010. She is quite right to say that we need more of them; we have a growing and ageing population and higher expectations of what the NHS should be delivering. It is for that reason that we have a number of things in action: we have 52,000 nurses in training; we have a return to practice programme, which has already prepared 2,000 nurses to come back into the profession; and we are introducing nursing apprenticeships and nursing associates. We are not complacent about this issue—we know it is important—but there are a number of programmes in train to fill the gap that she has identified.