Leaving the EU: Health and Social Care

Debate between Brendan O'Hara and David Simpson

Tuesday 19th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Brendan O'Hara]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The fear in the sector and among care users is palpable. A recent article in The Lancet, which backs up his points, states:

“All forms of Brexit involve negative consequences for the UK’s leadership and governance of health, in both Europe and globally”.

For me, that sums up the hon. Gentleman’s point exactly. I hope that he agrees.

We cannot get ourselves into a situation in which there is a barrier between the health and social care sector and that pool of labour. Age UK recently said that

“our care workforce is in no position to withstand the loss of good…care workers, wherever they come from.”

The King’s Fund said:

“Widespread and growing nursing shortages now risk becoming a national emergency and are symptomatic of a long-term failure in workforce planning, which has been exacerbated by the impact of Brexit and short-sighted immigration policies.”

The message from the sector to the Government is therefore clear and unambiguous: we simply cannot afford to cut ourselves off from the labour markets on which we have become so reliant and on which we will depend more and more in future. One look at the frontline of the health and social care sector and its delivery, and it is easy to see how heavily it depends on workers from outside the United Kingdom. Without access to those workers, the UK home market will be required to fill the gaps, but people are not queuing up to fill the vacancies that exist now, so do the Government believe that somehow post Brexit people will suddenly become available for work in the care sector?

[David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. He talks about the workforce, but is it not natural that as the economies of other countries get stronger, the workers who would have come here will be lost to natural erosion as they no longer want to come to the UK? The emphasis needs to be placed on training our own young people and making it advantageous for them to join the health service.

[Brendan O'Hara]

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point, but we have to compete for workers and to have an attractive package for people to come here to work, but if we take ourselves out of the game, we are no longer in the competition—we will have cut ourselves off. There are issues relating to retraining and getting people into the sector, but unfortunately the demographics are incredibly skewed against that happening, certainly in the short and medium term. I will come on to some of the statistics.

At the end of June 2018, NHS England had more than 100,000 unfilled posts. The NHS regulator has stated that such vacancies will become even more commonplace during the remainder of 2018-19. Both the Care Inspectorate and the Scottish Social Services Council have found that 40% of social care organisations report unfilled staff vacancies. There is no professional analysis out there that does not estimate that the demand for care will only increase in future. The King’s Fund, the Health Foundation and the Nuffield Trust have predicted that NHS England staff shortages could rise from 100,000 to almost a quarter of a million by 2030. That is more than one in six of service posts. At the end of last year, Care England estimated that by 2035 an additional 650,000 care jobs will be required just to keep pace with the demands of our ageing population.