Draft Dentists, Dental Care Professionals, Nurses, Nursing Associates and Midwives (International Registrations) Order 2022

Feryal Clark Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2022 General Committees

[Feryal Clark (Enfield North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone.

I welcome the measures regarding the registration of international dentists, dental care professionals, nurses, nursing associates and midwives. When we have 132,000 vacancies in the NHS, I am not here to stand in the way of cutting unnecessary red tape. However, let us not pretend that this is a long-term solution, or even a sticking plaster, when it comes to the problems that the NHS is facing.

The number of NHS dental practices had fallen by more than l,200 in the five years before the pandemic. Dental staff are leaving the profession: 2,000 dentists quit the NHS in 2021 alone. In nursing, there are 46,828 empty nursing posts across hospitals, mental health, community care and other services. That means one in 10 nursing roles are unfilled across the service overall. In midwifery, there are 800 fewer midwives than following the 2019 general election.

I will give the Government some credit: they have heeded the calls of their own Chancellor to assess, finally, the NHS workforce needs. Words will not be enough, however. Encouraging the recruitment of international healthcare professionals has serious ethical implications. It risks worsening the lack of healthcare workers in other countries that are dealing with shortages of their own, and it is no substitute for training home-grown talent.

That is why Labour has pledged the biggest expansion of medical school places in history, which will give the NHS the doctors it needs, and will be paid for by abolishing non-dom tax status. It includes creating 10,000 new nursing and midwifery placements every year, training 5,000 new health visitors, doubling the number of district nurses qualifying every year and doubling the number of medical school places, so that we have the doctors we need in our NHS. Labour will also produce a long-term workforce plan for the NHS for the next five, 10 and 15 years, which will ensure that we do not find ourselves in this position again.

Although I welcome the measures outlined by the Minister, the Government must acknowledge the scale of the crisis and rise to the challenge.

[The Chair]

I am quite generous about allowing the debate to go wider, but although I will allow some latitude, we will not have a debate on the NHS as a whole. On the other hand, Ministers are not supposed to get helpful pieces of paper from officials directly. Yes, that was a slap on the wrist, Minister, so it is one-all at the moment. John McDonnell will sort it out, though.