NHS: Staff

Lord Clark of Windermere Excerpts

Thursday 30th November 2017 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Clark of Windermere]

To move that this House takes note of the impact of Her Majesty’s Government’s fiscal policies on the recruitment, retention and conditions of NHS staff.

[Lord Clark of Windermere (Lab)]

My Lords, I am looking forward to this debate. I think it will be an excellent debate, with a wide array of speakers representing a great deal of experience right across the health and care service.

We all know that the NHS is one of the living institutions of our country, loved, appreciated and needed by its people. In spite of the difficulties facing it, the service it provides is second to none as the British people seek medical attention and healthcare. Year after year, surveys show that it is regarded internationally as the most efficient organisation anywhere in delivering healthcare.

I shall be a little provocative in what I am saying at this moment. I know it causes some discomfort to some Members on the Benches opposite that a state institution employing 1.3 million people can compete successfully against private medicine. When I say that, I do not include the Minister because I know he is committed to the health service, but I believe there are people in the Conservative Party who find the NHS uncomfortable. It was interesting that the Secretary of State chanced his luck when he alleged recently that the NHS was actually invented by the Conservative Party—a case utterly rebutted by my noble friend Lord Pendry on 2 November in a letter to the Guardian, so I do not need to take that further.

I trust that when we on this side speak today, the Minister will understand the strength of opinion that the Government are slowly but surely allowing the NHS to deteriorate. Several years ago, when I began to question Health Ministers on the NHS, the situation was precarious. Now it is getting almost desperate. The bottom line is that the Government are not providing sufficient funds to meet the demands of an increasing and ageing—we must take those two facts together—population, and that no clever words can hide the fact that they are breaking their manifesto policy to increase spending on the NHS in real terms year on year. If you look at the anticipated spending, you can see that that will not be the case.

I mentioned 1.3 million employees. Those employees are proud to work not for the health service but in it. The service is at its most efficient only when it works as a team. Everyone is interdependent. I feel at times that the Government do not really appreciate that fact. If there is one thing lacking in our NHS, it is that it has no central workforce planning, and that is of real concern.

At the moment, almost all employees feel the same—demoralised and undervalued. They give their all, and more and more people are treated. But the staff feel that their treatment by the Government shows that they are not regarded highly enough. They feel that they are the individuals who suffer most from the Government’s now out-of-date austerity programme. Wherever we look—whether at consultants, doctors, nurses, midwives, healthcare assistants, physiotherapists, radiotherapists, GPs, clerical staff, porters, ambulance drivers, dentists or the scores of other occupations in the health service—it is the same story. The Minister must know this because I know he talks to staff. They feel demoralised and undervalued. Yet, these are the very people who keep our NHS going. It is because of them that patients still get a good service. However, it is slowly getting worse again. We are finding, in spite of the best efforts of staff that waiting lists are growing month by month. Increasingly, deadlines for cancer treatment are being broken. In spite of the Government’s bold declarations, the future for mental health services does not look as good as it should.

Following the Budget, I noticed that initially the press lauded the Chancellor for what he appeared to be giving the NHS. However, after examination of the small print, the general public, the press and those involved increasingly realise how short-changed they were by the Chancellor. They took on board Jeremy Corbyn’s comment that the money, was “well short” of what is needed. Sir Bruce Keogh tweeted that the Budget,

“plugs some, but def not all, of NHS funding gap … Worrying that longer waits seem likely/unavoidable”.

Sir Malcolm Grant, chair of NHS England, said that the money,

“will go some way towards filling the widely accepted funding gap … we can no longer avoid the difficult debate about what it is possible to deliver for patients with the money available”.

NHS Providers stated that,

“tough choices will be needed and trade-offs will have to be made … It is difficult to see how the NHS can deliver everything in”,

the forthcoming year. I understand that just today the NHS England board is discussing what will happen—whether we will have rationing in health. This is against the background of the speech by Simon Stevens, chief executive of NHS England, who on 8 November said that an extra £4 billion was needed in 2018-19.

Yet only the Government seem to deny there is a problem. To pluck a number of key employees, we are short of 40,000 nurses. Recruitment from the European Union has all but dried up. Wages have been frozen at 1% since 2010, leading to a reduction in salary of 10.1% for nurses by this year. Unsurprisingly 70% of nurses reported feeling financially worse off, with 24% saying there were thinking of leaving their job because of money worries. The Government claim that there are 13,300 more nurses than in 2010 and 11,800 more doctors in hospitals. However, we have to question those figures. I do not dispute that they apply in hospitals but when looking at healthcare, we are talking not only about primary care in hospitals but aftercare—the care service. I have letters from care providers saying that they have had to close down some of their institutions because they simply cannot recruit nurses. There are insufficient nurses in this country.

It is no better for doctors. The BMA found a 13% decrease in applications to medical schools since 2013. Last year, there were 7,660 medical students beginning their course, compared with nearly 8,000 in 2010. GP numbers are falling. Almost one-third of GP partners are unable to fill vacancies. Only 13% of partners report that they do not need to fill vacancies, and figures show an actual decrease in the number of doctors working mainly as GPs. The result is that patients are having to wait longer and longer to get an appointment, increasing the demand on A&E departments in our hospitals, which are already under great stress. There needs to be some joined-up thinking.

Even if we go to the top of the tree and look at consultants, we find what I can only describe as a dire situation. The NHS has a shortage of consultants and would-be consultants. During the past year, 1,542 consultant posts were advertised, but only 853 certificates of completion of training issued. Not surprisingly, 45% of the advertised posts were left unfilled. There simply were not the qualified candidates. Ninety-five per cent of doctors in training report that poor morale is having a negative impact on patient safety in their hospital, with half reporting a serious or extremely serious impact.

I do not really need to continue. Perhaps I could sum up this point by citing the president of the Royal College of Physicians, Professor Jane Dacre, who neatly summed it up in her response to the Budget. She said that it,

“felt like we had been given short-term sticking plasters rather than the long-term sustainable plan our patients need”.

It is all very depressing. The Government take the view that it is really not their fault, but a lot of it is. I have to ask: why, when they came to office in 2010—with their coalition partners, but they were by far the leading partner—did they cut nurse training numbers by 22,000? It takes a long time to build up the shortfall that has been allowed. Why, at this critical moment when we do not know whether we have enough nurses or doctors—the Government say we have; I say we have not—why risk the numbers by abolishing the bursary scheme? It is a risk, and the Government know that there are fewer nurses going into training this year than in previous years. I do not have the precise figures but all the universities that I have contacted, with one exception, have found a considerable decrease. If there is no problem with nurses, why was it announced yesterday that we are to step up our recruitment of 5,500 more nurses from India?

I am being a bit critical of the Minister. I hope he will not take it personally but take this opportunity to write to me to correct the information. Last week, in a straightforward Question about agencies, I asked,

“what are the names and locations of the agencies registered to supply nurses to NHS trusts in England”?

It was a straightforward Question, but the Minister’s reply can be described only as gobbledegook. He said:

“Agency rules require that agencies are on NHS Improvement-approved frameworks and these frameworks monitor and approve agencies for supply to trusts. The approved framework operators are Crown Commercial Service, NHS Collaborative Procurement Partnership and HealthTrust Europe”—


I think HealthTrust Europe is an American company. The Answer continues:

“In addition to agencies on approved frameworks, trusts in exceptional patient safety situations can utilise the ‘break glass clause’ and work with an off-framework agency. Using an off-framework agency should be a culmination of a robust escalation process sanctioned by the trust board. Trust boards have primary responsibility for monitoring the local impact of the agency rules and ensuring patient safety”.


I spent a lot of time trying to understand it, and I have understood a bit of it. I have also found out—the latest figure I could get for any particular week—that there are 50,000 applications to use the “break glass clause”. Are those 50,000 nurses from agencies included in the Government’s figures?

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen (Con)]

My Lords, may I quickly say that there has been a mistake over the timing? If everybody speaks for 13 minutes, we will go two minutes over time. If possible, will your Lordships stick to 12 minutes? When the clock says 12 minutes, will noble Lords please sit down?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Clark of Windermere]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply. I began the debate by commenting that, having seen the list of speakers, I expected a first-class, thoughtful debate. I have not been let down. I thought that the debate was excellent. I want to single out, if I may, the noble Baroness, Lady Emerton. I felt privileged and honoured to hear her contribution. More than anything, I love the fact that she has retained the enthusiasm for and belief in the NHS that she took into her nurse training in 1953. I thank her very much for allowing us to share that. We have all certainly gained from it.

I hope that the Minister agrees that this has been a thoughtful debate. I have learned quite a lot from it and I hope that he has too. I hope that he will take up the spirit that came from three sides of this House—if we can have three sides here—because there is unease with our health service. However, we want the Government to succeed because we want the NHS to succeed.

Motion agreed.