Oral Answers to Questions

Julie Cooper Excerpts

Tuesday 15th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Hammond]

As I said earlier, nurses are absolutely the heart of our NHS, and my hon. Friend is right about the extra number of nurses at her hospitals. She is also right that retention is one of our big issues. That is why the Agenda for Change pay award was put through last year, why we are working with Health Education England to look at other retention methods and why we are increasing the number of training places to ensure that we not only retain nurses but recruit more into the national health service.

[Julie Cooper (Burnley) (Lab)]

I join you, Mr Speaker, in wishing my colleague a happy birthday. I acknowledge that no one knows better than she does about the crisis in nursing staff levels. At the same time, the shortfall in GPs has risen to 6,000, and a third of all practices have been unable to fill vacancies for over three months. Unsurprisingly, waiting times for GP appointments are at an all-time high. As ever under this Government, it is patients who suffer. The situation is set to get worse, with more practices destined to close this year. Why are the Government not taking urgent action to tackle that? When will we finally see the workforce implementation plan that has been promised?

[Stephen Hammond]

The hon. Lady asks about GPs. As she would want to acknowledge, a record number of doctors are being recruited into GP training. We are determined to deliver an extra 5,000 doctors into general practice. NHS England and Health Education England have a number of schemes in place to recruit more GPs and to boost retention—the GP retention scheme and the GP retention fund—and she will know, as I have said it twice this morning, that the workforce implementation plan, which is part of the long-term plan, will be published in the spring.