NHS Staffing Levels

Paulette Hamilton Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd November 2022 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Paulette Hamilton (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood) on bringing forward this important and timely debate. In all areas of healthcare, it is incredibly important that our NHS is able to cope with the growing demand for its services.

Across the board, staffing shortages in the health service, let down by 12 years of Tory chaos, are endemic. In nursing, 40,000 registered nurses in England have left the NHS in the past year. We have lost 4,700 GPs in the last decade, and hundreds of practices have closed since the last election. That has resulted in GP surgeries being massively overstretched, such as the one in my constituency that has 3,200 people on its books.

The cuts are not just numbers; they have a real impact on people’s lives. One of my constituents is a PE teacher with a chronic knee injury. She was unable to book a GP appointment and could not get an MRI scan. So that she could continue to work safely, she felt that she had no option but to book it privately, costing her £300.

In mental health services, local trusts are seriously struggling with a lack of capacity. Last year, around 2.8 million people had contact with NHS mental health, learning disability and autism services in England. That is around 5% of the population, and my city of Birmingham had the third highest percentage of adults in contact with those services. Despite the obvious problems in this area, the Royal College of Physicians has reported that, nationally, we can expect an increase of just 4,000 more mental health nurses by 2024, when more than 12,000 are required to meet demand. We know that the pressures that hospitals face lead them to rely on NHS staff banks and agency workers to cover for the lack of capacity. This year, 83% of nursing staff said that staffing levels on their last shift were not sufficient to meet patient needs safely and effectively.

The new Chancellor of the Exchequer said in 2015:

“For too long staffing agencies have been able to rip off the NHS by charging extortionate hourly rates which cost billions of pounds a year and undermine staff working hard to deliver high-quality care.”

However, this autumn’s Budget pledge to increase NHS spending by £3.3 billion next year is not enough to plug the £7 billion shortfall that the NHS could experience.

I was a nurse for 25 years. I understand how important it is for the NHS to have sufficient levels of staff, and the disastrous effect that staffing shortages have. Nurses work long hours day in, day out, to support people all across the UK. They often do this on very low pay, and we know that many hospitals across the country have opened food banks specifically to feed their staff. After 12 years of mismanagement by the Tory Government, it is no wonder that our nurses have been driven to take industrial action for the first time. As I said earlier, nurses are leaving the profession in droves; some 40,000 quit last year. I for one do not blame them. I cannot say, hand on heart and with 25 years of nursing experience, that I could do the job now. The blame for the mess lies squarely with the Conservatives.