National Health Service Bill
Debate between Caroline Lucas and Andrew Smith
Caroline Lucas
I am grateful to the hon. Lady, who speaks with great expertise in this area. She is absolutely right that the creeping privatisation and marketisation are, along with all the other problems they bring, incredibly inefficient.
Mr Andrew Smith (Oxford East) (Lab)
I am sure that everyone in the House sympathises with the lack of time for Second Reading of the hon. Lady’s Bill. Does she agree that the NHS is also direly threatened by the imposition of brutal pay restraint policies that do such damage to recruitment and retention, particularly in places such as Oxford?
Caroline Lucas
I absolutely agree with the right hon. Gentleman. It is no wonder that we cannot recruit more nurses and doctors when the Government treat them so badly and their expertise is so unappreciated.