NHS (Government Spending)

Debate between Sarah Wollaston and Chris Leslie

Wednesday 28th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Chris Leslie]

Labour Members are absolutely committed to saving the national health service from the fate that would befall it should the hon. Gentleman’s party have a further five years in office. We will absolutely not apologise for fighting tooth and nail to do what we can about, for instance, the staffing crisis that the NHS also faces.

[Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)]

rose—

[Chris Leslie]

Before I give way to the hon. Lady, I shall tell her what is happening with staffing in the NHS. The NHS is now spending a further £500 million a year on agency nurses. Six thousand nurses who were trained in the UK have left the country and gone elsewhere, and 4,000 nurses are coming from overseas to try to back-fill some of those places. We are spending a fortune, day after day—far more than we ought to be—on these more expensive agency nursing staff. I know that as Chair of the Health Committee, the hon. Lady has a view on agency nursing within the NHS. Is she really content with the situation?

[Dr Wollaston]

I will write to the hon. Gentleman on that point, which is very important, but I wanted to respond to his question to my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) about why we dropped Labour’s policy of 48-hour access. I will tell him why, as a former GP who was there at the time: it was because patients could not get advance appointments. It caused enormous distortion of clinical priorities, and it was absolutely right that it was dropped, as called for by the profession. It was a ridiculous policy and it is absolutely right that it has been dropped.

[Chris Leslie]

The hon. Lady should know that there were provisions for advance appointments in the system that we had. Given that we have these pressures, with GPs being totally overstretched and having more and more people to deal with, and the shrinking number of GPs per head of population, she should not be surprised that we are in this situation. We have to do more to recruit and train more GPs. That is part of the way in which we would save the NHS from the situation that it is facing.

When all these different factors are combined with the high levels of winter flu and the growing population, we have an NHS in crisis—but there is an alternative. Yes, we have to repeal the competition-driven Tory changes, but we also have to deliver a sustained increase in resources and a fund designed urgently to alleviate the pressures. That is why, as shadow Chief Secretary, I want to take the time to talk about our £2.5 billion fund.