NHS: Winter Staffing Levels

Lord Rennard Excerpts

Thursday 26th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord O’Shaughnessy]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for raising this. We have discussed a number of times the impact of the test on recruitment from countries other than the UK. It is entirely sensible for the NMC to look at this. On nurse training, I hope she will have been reassured by the announcement from my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Health at the Conservative Party conference that we will deliver a 25% increase in nurse training places from 2018-19 onwards.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, is not part of the problem for the NHS, and for hospitals in particular, during the winter that so many people have difficulty in accessing their GP? The number of GPs has fallen by 3% over the last two years. Is it not, therefore, counterproductive that the Government have been cutting funding for community pharmacies when many more people should be seeing their pharmacist and not seeking to see their GP or even turning up at A&E units?