NHS Workforce Expansion

Maria Caulfield Excerpts

Tuesday 28th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Maria Caulfield)]

Let me first pay tribute to all the wonderful staff across the NHS who day in, day out give their all for their patients. I should mention doctors and nurses but also cleaning staff, porters, receptionists, radiographers, physios and many others who make such a difference to patients’ experience.

It is disappointing that, once again, the Opposition have used the debate to talk down the NHS and not to recognise the incredible achievements and progress made: treating more patients than ever before; working on our plans to eradicate cervical cancer; progress for people with HIV, who are now able to have a normal life expectancy; reducing stillbirths by 21%; and reducing neonatal deaths by 17%. Those are just some of the achievements of our incredible staff for patients in this country.

Anyone listening to Opposition Members would think that life under the previous Labour Government was a health panacea. When we came into government, MRSA was rife across the NHS, with wards and hospitals closed, operations cancelled and patients dying from infection. Clostridium difficile was the same—in 2008, there were 8,300 deaths. Deep cleaning was needed across hospitals to keep them open and try to prevent infections. The Labour Government’s pledge to end mixed-sex wards failed; the then Health Secretary, Alan Johnson, announced that they had “got it wrong” when they could not manage it. Elderly women were sharing bays with young men, separated by just a curtain—there was no dignity for patients at all.

Then there was the PFI scandal, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Aaron Bell) pointed out, with £300 billion of debt for the taxpayer for projects worth just £54.7 billion. There was a £26 billion IT scheme that never saw the light of day. Undeterred, the Labour leader is now doubling down on his “fit for the future” plans for the NHS. When Labour was last in government, its “fit for the future” plans closed hospitals up and down the country, with plans to close the Princess Royal in Haywards Heath in my constituency. Between 2003 and 2010, in the last six years of the Labour Government, 26,000 beds were closed. That was the legacy of the last Labour Government for the NHS.

There are three precious elements of the NHS. There is the building infrastructure, which we are putting £10 billion of capital funding into this year—that is part of the 40 hospitals that we are now building to create better infrastructure for the future. We are also introducing state-of-the-art facilities, with over 90 rapid diagnostic centres and over 90 surgical hubs now open. We are eliminating our two-year wait for procedures, and are on track to eliminate our 18-month wait from April.

Of course, our staff are the most precious element of all. We are not pretending that things are perfect. As the hon. Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth) said, there are pressures, backlogs and delays in England, Wales and Scotland. It is pointless to play politics with the issues; those are the facts.

Let me list exactly what we are doing now to invest in our staff. We are on track to deliver 50,000 more nurses across the NHS by next year. We have 38,000 more nurses than in 2019. We have record numbers of staff in the NHS, with more than 1.25 million members of staff—41,800 more than a year ago. We have 4,800 more doctors and 10,900 more nurses. Last year, we had 72,000 people training to be a nurse, 9,000 people training to be a midwife and 30,000 people training to be an allied health professional. We had a 16% increase in students accepted on nursing and midwifery courses. We had 3,400 people starting a degree nurse apprenticeship, earning while they are learning and not accumulating student debt. We had student nurses supported with a student bursary of £5,000 a year.

Last year, we had over 19,400 non-UK nurses and health visitors joining the NHS. We had 11,600 non-UK doctors. We have funded 1,500 more medical places each year—a 25% increase over three years. We have five new medical schools, which are in Tyne and Wear, Essex, Kent, Lincolnshire and West Lancashire. We have 7,630 new entrants to undergraduate medical courses. We have introduced medical degree apprenticeships. With regard to retention, we have suspended until 2025 the rules on nurses who retire and the restricted hours that they can do, and we are consulting on removing pension barriers.

We are developing a workforce plan, as set out by the Chancellor. We are working with midwives, with Birthrate Plus, on staffing ratios in maternity units. We are on track to have 27,000 more mental health workers. We are rolling out mental health support teams in our schools. We are introducing Oliver McGowan training on autism across healthcare. We have had 3,000 undergraduate student dentists over the past few years. We had an increase of 5,039 dentists providing NHS services in the past year. In England, we have 2,500 pharmacists entering training each year. We have had a net increase of 1,400 pharmacists a year since 2016, and we are increasing the number of pharmacy technicians.

I could go on, because that is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to our investment in our staff. I will take no lectures from Opposition Members, because RCN statistics show that Labour-run Wales has 2,900 nurse vacancies and is spending £140 million on agency nurses. In fact, the emergency medicines workforce census this year says that there is one consultant in Wales for every 7,784 patients at A&E. [Interruption.] Opposition Members may laugh, but in Wales there are simply not enough staff to cope.

I will finish by addressing Labour’s non-dom tax plan, which is as much use as an ashtray on a motorbike. Labour Members’ non-dom tax plan for transforming the health service would raise just £3.2 billion. Not only have they spent that 10 times over, but their flagship policy—the shadow Secretary of State wants to scrap GP partnerships—will cost more than £7 billion, and buying them out and tearing up GP contracts will cost £1.7 billion a year. The Opposition are economically illiterate. [Interruption.] The shadow Secretary of State has said on the record that he wants to abolish GP partnerships. Perhaps he wants to clarify that and say it is not what he wants to do, but I do not see him rising to intervene.

This Government will not fall for the fairytale Labour party policies. As I have said, we are delivering now—not in the future—the many ways in which we are increasing our NHS workforce. We are focused on tackling covid backlogs, improving our services for patients, and increasing our NHS workforce in England. Let us see what happens in Wales with the Labour plans, but we value each and every one of the members of the NHS who deliver for patients day in, day out.

Question put: