NHS: Winter Staffing Levels

Lord Ribeiro Excerpts

Thursday 26th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord O’Shaughnessy]

The noble Lord knows that winter is always a more difficult time for the NHS. I hope he also knows that there are 11,000 more nurses on wards than there were in 2010. Indeed, I was looking at the data on doctors. There has been a 30% uplift in emergency doctors in that time as well. So there are more staff in the NHS—but, of course, there is much more need for winter preparedness. The NHS feels that it is better prepared than ever for winter.

On the issue that the noble Lord refers to—I assume he is talking about the story in the press today—that is, I stress, a local pilot that is being explored. I do not think it is even under way. It is being proposed by a local doctor—indeed, an emergency registrar. For it to go ahead, it is clear that any such pilot would have to abide by the very strict rules that exist on safety, safeguarding quality and so on for any care setting. The head of Age UK said that any new innovation—I think we want to encourage innovation—needs to pass the mum or grandma test. I think that is a very reasonable test to apply to something such as this.

[Lord Ribeiro (Con)]

My Lords, the only way in which to increase staffing levels in anticipation of the flu epidemic is through agency staff, which is going to cost a huge amount of money. Surely, the better thing to do would be to ensure that all health staff are vaccinated so they are at least healthy when the epidemic hits us—if it does.

[Lord O’Shaughnessy]

My noble friend talks with great authority on this issue and he is quite right. The NHS is offering all front-line health staff free vaccinations. NHS England has confirmed that it will also be paying for care workers in social care settings to get free jabs. Furthermore, we are now, for the first time, inoculating in school children aged between two and eight, who are sometimes known as “superspreaders”. This is to ensure that, if such an epidemic were to happen, we would be as well prepared as ever.