NHS Workforce

Debate between Paul Bristow and Sam Tarry

Tuesday 6th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sam Tarry]

Absolutely. My little sister is a nurse who works in palliative care in Southend, Essex. During the pandemic, her job was to help lots of people to experience the least suffering as they met the end of their life. The mental health of nurses has been broken, there is increased stress, and bank staff are being used—all as a result of nurses being so devalued that the Government have taken away their bursaries. We have a huge crisis, but one obvious fix would be to sort that out. Of course I agree that we have to listen and value our nurses.

[Paul Bristow]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sam Tarry]

I will make some headway, because plenty of other hon. Members want to speak.

It is not just about pay: workforce shortages are at unprecedented levels across the NHS. The latest figures reveal that there are now more than 133,000 vacancies in England alone—more than a third of which are in nursing—which is an all-time high and a record for this country under the Government. The vacancy rate in registered nursing is running at nearly 12%, which is an increase from 10.5% in the same period of the previous year. A key factor in the failure to attract and retain enough staff is the Government’s inability to provide workers with a decent pay rise. Some 68% of trusts report that staff are leaving for better terms and conditions elsewhere.

[Paul Bristow]

The hon. Gentleman spoke about nurses’ pay and how they deserve more. We would all like to give nurses more money, but how does he account for the fact that the Welsh Labour Government are giving exactly the same pay award as proposed by this Government?

[Sam Tarry]

I cannot speak for the Welsh Government, but if we look at their record—the times that they have been returned to office with a stonking majority, and the fact that there are no strikes on their railways, which they had the guts to take into public ownership; they called it what it was—I would much rather be living under them than the appalling Government we have.

The impact of those shortages on existing staff is enormous. Reports by Unison have repeatedly highlighted the acute strain that understaffing has put on the workforce, with stress and burnout rife among NHS staff. That predates covid, which demonstrates the immense damage done by a decade or more of Conservative Governments and the failure of successive Governments and Prime Ministers to invest in the workforce or take workforce planning seriously. As the RCN has said, the dispute is about not just pay, but patient safety, which is key for all of us. Staffing levels are so low that patient care is being compromised; only paying nursing staff fairly will bring the NHS to a point where it can recruit and retain people to address those issues.

I have visited my local hospital, King George Hospital, on many occasions and I have heard about the impact of staff shortages and pay cuts on staff and patients alike. Recently, for once, I went to open some new services in paediatric emergency and radiology—something positive after 20 years of campaigning for our local NHS in Ilford—yet the staff were still overstretched, run ragged and demoralised. They just want the support that they need to care for their patients, which means pay recognition and ensuring fair practices at work without undermining their working conditions.

I spoke to staff who, during the worst of the pandemic, received food donations from the local community just to get by. That should never, ever be allowed to happen and makes it even more sickening to hear about the outright corruption on the other side of this House and the despicable corrupt PPE deals with people like Baroness Mone. People in Ilford are sick and tired of that because of the attacks on our local services. We even had to stand up and campaign for our local ambulance station not to be shut down under the Government’s measures.

Conservative Members seek to present nurses’ demands as unreasonable and undeliverable, and have asked nurses to tighten their belts even further, while they have allowed the pay of the wealthy to explode. This year, FTSE 100 CEOs collected an average of 109 times the pay of ordinary workers—that is part of the answer to where we get the money to pay the people who actually keep our country off its knees. Where is the Government’s commitment to pay restraint when it comes to high pay and those sorts of people? How many Conservative Members have fat cat salaries and executive directorships, and coin it in left, right and centre?