Health and Care Bill

Rachael Maskell Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Wednesday 30th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar]

I hope the hon. Lady will forgive me, because I will finish discussing the workforce amendments before I turn to the so-called genocide amendments and the organ sales amendments. I will come to her point, but I hope she will allow me to do it in that way; I have heard what she has said.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Edward Argar]

I will make a little progress, then I will give way to the hon. Lady, as I tend to do. She is a regular participant in health debates.

We are already committed to improving workforce planning. In July 2021, as I said, we commissioned that important work with partners to review long-term strategic trends. It is also important to note in that context that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced that we are merging NHS England and Health Education England, which is a hugely important move that brings together the workforce planning and the provision of places and of new members of the workforce with the funding available for that and the understanding of what is needed in the workforce. It brings supply and demand considerations together.

[Edward Argar]

I will make a little more progress, then I will give way to the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) and then, if I have time, I will give way to her. I want to address the points of the hon. Member for Lewisham East (Janet Daby) in good time and I am conscious that the votes took up a chunk of the time allowed for this group of amendments.

We are also committed to increasing transparency and accountability. The unamended clause already increases transparency and accountability on the roles of the various actors within the NHS workforce planning system.

[Rachael Maskell]

When looking at workforce planning, it is really important not only that the Government depend on NHS professionals trained overseas, but that they look at commissioning more training places here. In particular, I would point to the dentistry profession, as the Government are currently waiting for 700 dentists to pass their exams. It really does highlight the shortage of training for our own dentists when one in three dentists practising has trained overseas. Will the Government look at the commissioning of more training places so that we can grow our own workforce?

[Edward Argar]

The hon. Lady will be pleased to know, or will I hope be reassured to a degree to know, that underpinning our strategy to grow the workforce—for example, the nursing workforce or other specialisms—is the fact that we have multiple strands to the strategy. Those coming from overseas who wish to work in the NHS are always going to be an important and valued part of our NHS workforce, but of course we are also committed to growing the number, for want of a better way of putting it, that we grow at home through training places and medical schools. Crucially, however, a key element here is retention of our existing staff, so that we are not simply recruiting and training lots more staff to replace those who are leaving. All of those factors are important.

--- Later in debate ---

[Wes Streeting]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. It is certainly the case that refugees fleeing Ukraine—indeed, other conflict zones around the world—bring enormous skills to our country. For as long as they are here and living with us, we should enable them to make whatever contribution they wish. If some of the people from Ukraine or elsewhere want to work in the NHS, we should absolutely welcome them with open arms.

[Rachael Maskell]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who is making an excellent speech. This debate is concentrated on physical health, but if we look at workforce planning on mental health we know we are at a significant deficit. If we are talking about parity of esteem, surely Lords amendment 29 is absolutely imperative, so that we can start investing in the future of our mental health services?

[Wes Streeting]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right and she will know of our party’s ambitious commitments, outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan), to ensure that patients receive guaranteed mental health treatment within a month. That would be revolutionary. It will require investment and require recruiting the people we need to help provide that care, but this country is living through a mental health crisis on top of everything else. This has been a deeply difficult two years for our country during the pandemic. Many people bear not just the physical scars and ongoing physical health consequences of long covid, but the grief, the loss and the injury to their mental health and wellbeing caused by this deadly pandemic. Many of those people who are suffering mental health crises are the very people who are still turning up for their shifts in the hospitals, still turning up for their shifts in the GP surgeries, and still turning up at work to help care for others even though they are in need of care themselves.

Lords amendment 29 does not commit the Government to hire thousands more doctors and nurses, although they should. It does not commit to new funding for the NHS, although it desperately needs that. It does not even commit the Government to finally publish the workforce strategy the NHS is crying out for, despite the fact that the NHS has not had a comprehensive workforce strategy since the Labour Government’s plan was published in 2003. All we are talking about today is an independent review of how many doctors, nurses and other staff the NHS needs for the future. That is not just a view put across by Labour Members: it is supported by many Members right across the House, including the Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, the right hon. Member for South West Surrey, who is a former Health Secretary. It is not the first time that he has helped to unite the sector, although I remember the days when it was sometimes united in opposition to, rather than in support of, his proposals.

I will say this, actually: when the right hon. Member for South West Surrey took over as Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, I was really nervous about the prospect of a former Health Secretary effectively marking his own homework, but on this issue, he has shown a degree of honest reflection and has genuinely contributed his experience to the debate about the future of health and social care in this country. Not only has he been honest about where he fell short, and where other Conservative Ministers may have fallen short, but he is determined to make sure that we improve the quality of the health and social care debate in this House. I very much welcome his contribution to the debate about the NHS workforce challenge.