UKPOL.CO.UK

Category: Health

  • Margaret Greenwood – 2022 Speech on the NHS Workforce

    Margaret Greenwood – 2022 Speech on the NHS Workforce

    The speech made by Margaret Greenwood, the Labour MP for Wirral West, in the House of Commons on 6 December 2022.

    It is clear that we have a crisis in NHS staffing. For the very first time in its 106-year history, members of the Royal College of Nursing have voted for strike action in their fight for fair pay and safe staffing. I express my solidarity with them. They do not do this lightly. Consecutive Conservative Governments have brought them to this situation.

    Staff shortages are putting immense pressure on the NHS. There were more than 133,000 vacancies in the NHS in England in September 2022, up from around 103,000 the year before. There were more than 47,000 registered nursing vacancies in September, about 8,500 more than in March, and there were more than 9,000 medical staff vacancies in September, over 1,000 more than in March.

    We all know things were bad before the pandemic, but an already extremely serious situation has got worse. This staffing crisis is a direct result of the failure of Conservative Governments to plan and deliver the workforce we need, and it is leading to very high levels of stress for staff and extraordinarily long waiting lists for patients.

    Two weeks ago, I led a Westminster Hall debate on NHS staffing. Numerous organisations provided briefings in advance of that debate, and I will share some of their concerns about staff shortages, the pressures on the NHS and the impact they are having on workers and patients. Their observations reflect the depth of the crisis in the NHS, along with the complexity of medicine and the immense level of expertise in this country. The Government really should listen to them.

    Research by the British Medical Association points to a lack of doctors in comparison with other nations. The average number of doctors per 1,000 people in the OECD’s EU nations is 3.7, but England has just 2.9. Meanwhile, Germany has 4.3.

    Parkinson’s UK has said:

    “People with Parkinson’s are facing huge waiting times for diagnosis, mental health support, check-ups and medication reviews. This is due to critical shortages of NHS staff across England who are available to see people with Parkinson’s. Problems with finding healthcare professionals who understand the condition and accessing the right specialist services have been exacerbated by the pandemic. Waiting times for a consultant after diagnosis are up to two years in some areas.”

    The Royal College of Midwives has expressed serious concerns that the NHS in England has 800 fewer midwives than it did at the time of the 2019 general election and that

    “midwife numbers are falling in every region of England.”

    According to the latest census by the Royal College of Physicians

    “52%—more than half—of advertised consultant physician posts were unfilled in 2021. That is the highest rate of unfilled posts since records began, and of the 52%, 74% went unfilled due to a lack of any applicants at all.”

    The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists has said:

    “Speech and language therapy services across the entire age range are facing unprecedented demand and there are simply not enough speech and language therapists currently to meet the level of demand.”

    Last year’s report by the British Society for Rheumatology found that

    “chronic workforce shortages mean departments lack sufficient staff to provide a safe level of care.”

    This means

    “patients are experiencing progressively worse health, leading to unnecessary disability and pain.”

    Cancer Research UK has pointed out that

    “critical staff shortages impact all aspects of cancer care”—

    I would have thought the Secretary of State would like to listen to what Cancer Research UK has to say. It highlights:

    “In 2020-21, £7.1 billion was spent on agency and bank staff to cover gaps in the NHS workforce, an increase of almost £1 billion from an already enormous £6.2 billion spent the year before. This is money that could be spent on training and recruiting full-time equivalent NHS staff, but instead is”—

    being used—

    “in an attempt to mitigate chronic NHS staff shortages.”

    Unison has said it is

    “very concerned that NHS services are in a dire state due to there being insufficient staff numbers available to deliver safe patient care.”

    It points out:

    “While the government has belatedly accepted the need for an independent assessment of the numbers of health professionals needed in future, they repeatedly refused to write such plans into the Health and Care Act 2022, despite a broad coalition of more than 100 healthcare organisations calling for this.”

    The TUC is calling on the Government to put in place

    “an urgent Retention Package, with a decent pay rise at its heart.”

    The 2022 pay award is well below current inflation levels, so it amounts to a real-terms pay cut. The TUC went on to say:

    “The 2022 pay uplift needs to be set at a level which will retain existing staff within the NHS”,

    is attractive to new recruits,

    “and recognises and rewards the skills…of health workers.”

    In recent weeks, we have seen announcements of industrial action from other organisations representing NHS workers, including Unite the union, Unison and the GMB. In addition, the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy is balloting members and the British Medical Association will ballot next year. As with the Royal College of Nursing, this is not being done lightly. NHS workers care deeply about patients and the service as a whole, but they can also see that the NHS is at breaking point. It is notable that, in a recent poll of 6,000 adults carried out on behalf of Unite, 73% of respondents supported NHS and care workers receiving pay rises that keep up with the cost of living.

    The Conservative Governments’ failure to address chronic staffing shortages in the NHS is putting those working in the service under immense pressure and, in some instances, it is putting patients at risk. Since 2010, instead of focusing on and planning and delivering a well-resourced, well-staffed NHS, the Conservatives have focused their energy on not one but two major reorganisations of the NHS, designed to open it up to privatisation. This ideological agenda is causing immense suffering to patients and great stress for staff.

    The Health and Care Act 2022 provided for the revoking of the national tariff and its replacement with a new NHS payment scheme. The national tariff is a set of rules, prices and guidance that covers the payments made by commissioners to secondary healthcare providers for the provision of NHS services. Engagement on the NHS payment scheme is ongoing, with a statutory consultation due to begin this month. Given the requirement in the Act for NHS England to consult each relevant provider, including private providers, before publishing the scheme, I am very concerned that this may well be a mechanism through which private health companies will have the opportunity to undercut the NHS. If that happens, one inevitable outcome would be an erosion of the scope of “Agenda for Change”, as healthcare that should be provided by the NHS is increasingly delivered by the private sector. I ask the Minister to give us an assurance that that will not be used in that way.

    As I have said, the Conservative Governments’ failure to address chronic staffing shortages in the NHS is putting those working in the service under immense pressure and, in some instances, it is putting patients at risk. Since 2010, instead of focusing on planning and delivering a well-resourced, well-staffed NHS, they have focused on a privatisation. In the second reorganisation, they held a consultation, allegedly, when NHS staff were working incredibly hard during the pandemic. It was very unfair to carry out a consultation while the people to be affected most by it were dealing with the worst public health crisis we have seen.

    The staffing crisis has been created by the Conservatives on their watch. The comprehensive workforce plan announced in the autumn statement is due to be published next year. It is long overdue and it will need to be backed up by sufficient resources. In the meantime, the Government bear a responsibility in relation to how the NHS fares this winter. They have the opportunity to avert industrial action and should do all in their power to do so. They must support those who work in the service and make sure that NHS workers receive a fair pay rise.

  • Holly Lynch – 2022 Speech on the NHS Workforce

    Holly Lynch – 2022 Speech on the NHS Workforce

    The speech made by Holly Lynch, the Labour MP for Halifax, in the House of Commons on 6 December 2022.

    It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long-Bailey), who made an incredibly powerful speech.

    I do not think I am being dramatic when I say that a genuine sense of fear has set in across the country about being in a position of needing to use the NHS. Almost every family now have a story about how they or, even worse, a loved one have needed to access care and have had a very difficult experience. People’s experiences range from waiting at A&E to waiting for an ambulance, from being unable to get a dentist appointment when they were in pain and urgently needed one to facing a wait years long to see a specialist. One member of my team called up on 25 November and was told, “You’re in luck: there’s been a cancellation at the GP’s, so they’ll book you an appointment—but it’s for a telephone consultation on 20 December.” The chronic pressures in staffing across the board are affecting healthcare in every part of the country.

    Margaret Greenwood

    This afternoon we have heard some horrendous stories about people waiting for ambulances: hideous delays of 16 hours or more for people in pain and sometimes truly tragic circumstances. Does my hon. Friend agree that that shows the abject failure of this Government to provide a health service that we can all be proud of?

    Holly Lynch

    My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Not only is there a massive impact on patient safety and care, with detrimental outcomes for patients, but there is a loss of service to others: while paramedics and ambulances wait outside A&E, there is an impact on care for all the other people who need that provision. My hon. Friend makes a really powerful point.

    I want to focus on some key areas of the NHS workforce, starting with midwifery. The chief executive of the Royal College of Midwives, Gill Walton, has told the Health and Social Care Committee that England is more than 2,000 midwives short of the numbers it needs, and the situation is getting worse. The RCM’s analysis shows that midwife numbers fell by a further 331 in the year to November 2022. We need a plan because, as other hon. Members have said, the staffing shortages are driving further staffing shortages. More than half of all midwives surveyed by the RCM said that they were considering leaving their job, with 57% saying that they would leave the NHS in the next year.

    In November last year, I joined a March with Midwives rally in Halifax, where midwives held up signs that they had made themselves and that said things like, “I’m a physically and mentally exhausted midwife”, and, “I can’t keep saying sorry for no beds, no midwives, no support and no time”. What really brought home how it is not just about the impact of short staffing on patients and patient safety was the signs that midwives’ children had made themselves. One sign said, “My Mum falls asleep on the driveway after work”. It was made by a girl who told me that she had come out of the house one morning ready for school, only to find that her mum had driven home after a nightshift, pulled on to the driveway and fallen asleep in the car because she was so exhausted. A younger child had made a sign that simply said, “Mummy being late from work equals me being a lonely kid”.

    Case studies conducted by the Royal College of Midwives highlighted not just the strain on the service, but the strain in the workforce and their families. A midwife called Julia said:

    “We’re reducing the time we give to women, having to close facilities, reduce antenatal education, postnatal visits cut to a minimum. Stretched physically is one thing, you can rest your body eventually when home, but the mind, the mind does not have an easy off switch. The constant unrealistic expectations on maternity staff is damaging their mental health, it’s impacting on the wider service and it’s putting women, babies and families hopes and dreams in danger.”

    This is why a Labour Government with a commitment to train 10,000 additional nurses and midwives every year cannot come fast enough.

    Karin Smyth

    My hon. Friend is making some excellent points, particularly about the impact of those exhaustion levels on families. In my speech I spoke about the recruitment of families who looked forward to their jobs and were proud of working in the NHS. That is important to bringing future generations into the health service, and giving encouragement to young people in schools. It is still a fantastic career, but does my hon. Friend agree that helping young people not to be deterred by that negative publicity and helping them through training routes is a crucial way of solving the current workforce problems?

    Holly Lynch

    We have all told stories about the NHS heroes in our constituencies today, but my hon. Friend is right about the need to transform that into an attractive skills plan. Some of the midwives and their children whom I met were extremely proud to be in NHS families. Every member of those families is affected by that shared sense of pride, but also by that shared sense of exhaustion, and there are problems for the whole family when there are problems for the NHS worker. My hon. Friend has made a powerful point.

    Emma Hardy

    As I pointed out in my speech when I was talking about radiotherapy, the reason people are leaving the profession is to do with the work-life balance. It is not just a question of the number of people who are leaving midwifery, but a question of the number of people in midwifery who are reducing their hours to try to achieve that balance. Does my hon. Friend agree that something is seriously amiss when people have not fallen out of love with the job, but are simply finding that they cannot do the job while also maintaining the home life that they need?

    Holly Lynch

    Once again, my hon. Friend is absolutely right, as I know when I meet those children of NHS staff who hold up signs saying, “When my mummy is late home it means that I am a lonely kid”. As other Members have pointed out, when NHS workers are exhausted at the end of a shift but find that the cavalry is not arriving and there is no one to take over, they cannot walk out of their jobs as other people might be able to. They have to stay and deliver patient safety, rather than leaving those patients at risk. Questions about the life-work balance and childcare—who will feed the kids when they get home?—are not easy questions for workers in that position to answer.

    We have to transform the experiences of mothers and families using maternity services. Like almost every other parent who has had to use those services in recent years, I can say that it is a massive worry. You are told, “Once your waters have broken and your contractions are this regular, come to the hospital”, but even after that point I kept being asked not to come to the hospital, because there was only one bed left and it might be needed for someone else. That is the last thing you want to hear when you are in labour. Worrying about staffing and bed shortages compounds what is already one of the most stressful experiences that women—indeed, parents—can go through.

    Let me now say something about paramedics, and all those working on the frontline of our ambulance services. I have worked closely with paramedics, in particular with the GMB’s union representative, Sarah Kelly, on the Protect the Protectors campaign, and I have spent a day out with paramedics, seeing just how relentless their days are. Analysis carried out by the GMB found that there were 7.9 million calls for an ambulance in 2010-11, but by 2021-22 that had risen to 14 million, a pretty staggering increase of 77%. The monthly handover delays report from the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives reveals that the performance of ambulance services fell to its lowest ever level in October. The report shows that, across the month, 169,000 hours of ambulance crew time were lost due to delays. That meant that paramedics could not answer over 135,000 calls for help. That number represented 23% of ambulance services’ total potential capacity to respond to 999 calls. All three of these metrics are the worst in the NHS’s history.

    Staff have balloted for industrial action, and we can see how they do not feel listened to and that they are carrying so much responsibility. My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) has already made this point powerfully from the Dispatch Box. None of us here in the Chamber today has to face the reality multiple times a day of knowing that, no matter how hard we work, there could be fatal consequences for the vulnerable people we are looking after because the system in which we work is fundamentally failing. We do not carry that burden; we ask the paramedics, and all NHS staff, to carry it.

    We know that, in addition to this, too many workers—after making such an exhausting contribution to the NHS—are facing financial hardship for their efforts. Like in midwifery and other areas of the NHS, research indicates that one in 1,000 ambulance workers have left since 2018 to seek a better work-life balance or better pay, or to take early retirement. It is not that workers are asking for more pay for the sake of it; it is because inflation is at 11%, energy bills have gone through the roof and the cost of fuel to enable them to get to work has shot up. The National Institute of Economic and Social Research has predicted that around 30,000 households could see their monthly mortgage repayments become greater than their monthly income in the months ahead. If the Government got a grip of these factors, they would not have so many workers being forced to ask for more pay just to make ends meet. I ask the Government to please speak to workers, to work with their trade unions and to work through their concerns, which are very real.

    Turning to NHS dentistry, I presented a petition to the Government on 1 November on access to NHS dental care, signed by 549 people online as well as a number of signatures in hard copy—some are still coming into my office. Like all MPs, I have had so much casework in recent months where local people simply cannot see an NHS dentist. The British Dental Association says that more than 43 million dental appointments were lost between April 2020 and April 2022, including more than 13 million appointments for children.

    Dentistry is now the No. 1 issue raised with HealthWatch, with almost 80% of the people who contact the organisation saying that they find it difficult to access dental care. The General Dental Council says that almost a quarter of the population—24%—report having experienced dental pain in the last 12 months. More locally, HealthWatch in Calderdale contacted every dental practice across Calderdale last year to establish whether they were willing to accept new NHS patients, whether they would register a child and whether they were offering routine appointments. Every dental practice told HealthWatch that it could not currently register a new NHS patient of any age. It is the same story.

    Data from the British Dental Association reveals that 3,000 dentists in England have stopped providing NHS services since the start of the pandemic. For every dentist leaving the NHS entirely, 10 are reducing their NHS commitment by 25% on average. A BDA survey from May 2022 shows that 75% of dentists plan to reduce the amount of NHS work they do next year, with almost half planning to change career, seek early retirement or enter fully private practice. As in other areas of the NHS, the combination of pressures and remuneration is driving what remains of a depleted workforce away. It is a self-defeating cycle that the Government have to step in to break.

    Other Members have made points today about the potential of community pharmacies. Having worked in a pharmacy when I was in the sixth form doing my A-levels, it became clear to me that this was often the longest standing and most trusted relationship that members of the community had with a healthcare professional. The pharmacy was the shopfront that was always open during the pandemic, where people could go and meet somebody who knew them and knew their circumstances. That really is the value of community pharmacies. We know they have the capacity to do so much more, and hon. Members on both sides of the House have spoken about unlocking that potential and relieving some of the pressure on A&E departments and GP surgeries by empowering community pharmacies to deliver the work they are best placed to deliver because of their deep roots in our communities.

    Labour has a plan for the NHS. It is costed, comprehensive and will save the NHS. In today’s debate, the Government have not had the humility even to acknowledge that there is a problem in the NHS, never mind having a plan of action. That is why a Labour Government cannot come soon enough.

  • Rebecca Long-Bailey – 2022 Speech on the NHS Workforce

    Rebecca Long-Bailey – 2022 Speech on the NHS Workforce

    The speech made by Rebecca Long-Bailey, the Labour MP for Salford and Eccles, in the House of Commons on 6 December 2022.

    The national health service is facing one of the worst workforce crises in its history. The decentralisation and deliberate marketisation of large parts of the health service, the driving down of staff pay, 12 years of austerity and so-called efficiency savings have brought frontline services to the brink of collapse.

    A report by the Health Foundation revealed that the UK has spent around 20% less per person on health each year than similar European countries over the past decade. As a result of sustained real-terms pay cuts, some hospitals have food banks for staff, some are handing out welfare packages, and there are even reports of NHS staff sleeping in their cars as they cannot afford the fuel to and from work. It is no surprise that there are more than 133,000 vacancies across the NHS.

    However, instead of helping to address the pressures faced by an overworked, underpaid and demoralised NHS workforce, the Government appear to be deliberately picking a fight with the trade unions representing those key workers by fiercely resisting entirely reasonable pay claims. There is genuine desperation out there among those workers and other key workers like them who are experiencing the definition of in-work poverty. They are not able to afford the basics of food, clothing, housing and privatised utility bill payments. It is therefore no surprise that they are left with no option but to publicly voice their desperation over low pay, unmanageable workloads and patient safety.

    GMB, Unison and Unite have confirmed this week that there will be national walk-outs across the ambulance service. Nurses will strike this month for the first time in their 106-year history; they simply cannot take any more. The Royal College of Nursing’s last shift survey report found that eight in 10 shifts were unsafe, and 83% of nursing staff surveyed said that staffing levels on their last shift were not sufficient to meet all patients’ needs safely and effectively. For context, an experienced nurse’s salary has fallen 20% in real terms since 2010.

    As we heard, midwives are balloting for strike action. A recent survey carried out by the Royal College of Midwives shows that more than half of staff are considering leaving the profession, citing inadequate staffing levels and concern for the quality and safety of care that they can deliver. It also estimates that the UK is short of more than 3,500 midwives.

    The NHS workforce was rightly lionised by the British public for their selfless devotion and service during the pandemic, yet the abject response of the Government is to unleash yet more austerity on public services that are already cut to the bone, and to further hold down the wages of hard-pressed workers. We had reference to the autumn statement today but, staggeringly, although those workers continue to suffer, hidden in the depths of that statement was not an admittance of culpability for the current economic crisis or a plan to reverse NHS decline, but a massive tax cut on bank profits. The bank surcharge was cut from 8% to just 3%. That comes on top of the removal of the cap on bankers’ bonuses a few months ago and the abject refusal to abolish non-dom tax status. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) said at the start of the debate, the Government made choices—and the choice they made was to prioritise the interests of a select few over the interests of the NHS, patient safety and the welfare of workers in the health service.

    Today the Government have the opportunity to recognise their gross misjudgment and make the right choice. They have the opportunity to increase resources across the NHS and set out an urgent workforce plan with measures to increase retention and support staff. They have the opportunity to introduce an immediate restorative pay rise for NHS staff that reflects the value that society places on their vital work. They must also award recruitment and retention premiums to new entrants and existing staff and provide financial support for those who are studying to become NHS professionals.

    NHS staff are ringing the alarm and saying that funding, pay and patient safety are inextricably linked. They are the true heroes. They do not ask for thanks; they do what they do day in, day out without fanfare because they truly care. It is time the Government showed them the respect they deserve.

  • Karin Smyth – 2022 Speech on the NHS Workforce

    Karin Smyth – 2022 Speech on the NHS Workforce

    The speech made by Karin Smyth, the Labour MP for Bristol South, in the House of Commons on 6 December 2022.

    In 1948, at the dawn of the NHS, we were around 50,000 nurses short. By the 1960s, 40% of junior doctors were from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Thousands came from the Caribbean. It is estimated that by the 1970s, 12% of British nurses were Irish nationals, my own family among them. My Aunt Margaret Carter came to Stockport and my cousin Maureen McNulty came to Leeds. Britain welcomed them; they were not invaders. We trained them, we gave them accommodation, we offered them prospects. In the three decades I have worked in the NHS, the hundreds of nurses I have worked with remember their first job. They remember being greeted and welcomed. They remember their new belts. They remember it with great pride. We welcomed them nationally and, crucially, we welcomed them locally. We supported them with accommodation, transport and decent prospects.

    In January 2019, the then Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock), made a statement about the long-term plan and the recommendations. Like the Secretary of State today, he talked about the largest increase in health spending. What he failed to admit, as did the Secretary of State today, was that we had witnessed a decade of the lowest growth the NHS had ever had. In particular, it badly hit public health, capital spending—why we have a £10 billion backlog on maintenance—and workforce education and training. Even if we skirt over the suppression of Exercise Cygnus and pandemic planning, we entered the pandemic unprepared. That is why we had rushed, ad hoc, WhatsApp-panicked procurement processes—about which we will hear much more later today. That is why 2020 was so bad.

    Members do not have to take my word for it. In June 2019, following that earlier statement, Baroness Harding and Sir David Behan, chair of Health Education England, gave evidence to the Health and Social Care Committee. I recommend that hon. Members read it. I totally agreed with Baroness Harding that the way we solve the workforce crisis is all about staff retention. It is all about people feeling that their careers were not being developed and that they did not have an opportunity to get on. At the time, retention rates were higher in any other profession. It was also noted that if we had kept at 2012 retention levels, we would have had 16,000 more nurses in 2019 than we had at the time. That is the problem.

    There are solutions and we have heard some of them today, but they are a mix of the national and the local. At national level, we need to welcome people. We will always need overseas recruitment, but upwards of 80% of NHS staff are homegrown. We need to incentivise retention—it is cheaper, it is quicker, it is the smart thing to do. The reasons for loss of staff are well known. The Government need to revisit the Augar review. They need to notice what has happened with the loss of bursaries. We need to involve further and higher education in that retention work.

    We also need to look at regional solutions. The Lansley Act, the Health and Social Care Act 2012, destroyed the regional architecture but there is still a role, still some semblance of a network, possibly grouping ICSs—we talked about that today—where NHS England could have a role without the performance stick. The emergency planning architecture, which was ignored at the beginning of the pandemic but still exists in some places and did rise to the challenge, linking local authorities and public health, could offer a skeleton of a service to co-operative supportive networks above trust and ICS level. But eventually everything is local. Just as we welcome people nationally and have national support structures to retain staff, we absolutely have to do things locally. We need to look at housing, transport, progression and, as has been said, pay and retention.

    I am not particularly interested in the large figures that have been bandied around today, including the millions of people on waiting lists and the 165,000 social care vacancies; I want to know what is happening in Bristol. I want to know what is happening to GP waiting times in Whitchurch, Bedminster and Bishopsworth. I want to know the vacancy rates at the Bristol Royal Infirmary and Southmead Hospital. When I asked the Secretary of State about the vacancy rate in North East Cambridgeshire, obviously, he could not answer, because none of us in this House can answer that question. As MPs, we should know the scale of the problem in our constituencies and, frankly, we do not. We need to know and to communicate to local people what the problem is. We need to help with the local situation and priorities, and we have to build our way out of it.

    There are no easy solutions, but there is a path. Sadly, the Government have not even started on that path. If we are to keep spending ever more of our country’s wealth on the NHS and care system—as we will, although it would help if we had grown the economy more in the last 10 years—local people must have a say in that. They have to understand the trade-offs and, crucially, be able to hold someone to account locally for the parlous state of our waiting lists.

  • Richard Burgon – 2022 Speech on the NHS Workforce

    Richard Burgon – 2022 Speech on the NHS Workforce

    The speech made by Richard Burgon, the Labour MP for Leeds East, in the House of Commons on 6 December 2022.

    Just two years ago, in the middle of the greatest public health crisis in decades, millions of people came out to clap for the nurses, doctors and other NHS workers who were putting their lives on the line to save the lives of others. As people will remember, Conservative Members were only too happy to be seen joining in the applause. How times have changed.

    We now have Tory Ministers wheeled out on the media to attack those same NHS workers with sick claims that their planned action for fair pay is aiding Putin’s abhorrent war on Ukraine. Those disgraceful remarks appear to be the opening salvo in a Tory propaganda war that seeks to blame NHS workers for the deep crisis in our health service. The Tories will attack nurses, as they do every other worker forced to defend their pay and conditions. But nurses did not create the NHS staffing crisis. Nurses did not create record NHS waiting lists. Nurses did not underfund our NHS. Nurses did not hand tens of billions of pounds that should have gone to the NHS over to the private sector, including in corrupt contracts. Whoever the Tories try to blame, the simple truth is this: it is 12 years of Conservative party rule that has created the crisis in our NHS.

    At its core is a crisis in the NHS workforce, with workforce shortages at an unprecedented level across the NHS. The statistics are eye-watering, with 133,000 NHS vacancies in England alone and a record high of 47,000 nursing vacancies. This Tory-created staffing crisis is why patients are struggling to get a GP appointment, why heart attack patients face ambulance waiting times of more than an hour and why many are not getting the life-changing operations they urgently need.

    Today we will vote on an important policy to scrap the non-dom tax status that is exploited by the super-rich to avoid £3.2 billion in taxes every year. Scrapping that, as Labour advocates, could fund a long-term plan to train enough NHS staff. For example, it could double the number of medical training places and deliver 10,000 more nursing placements.

    The Tories should back that plan to put the NHS before non-doms and invest in our NHS instead of lining the pockets of the super-rich. It is a plan that would help bring about a long-term solution to this crisis. For the next two years that they are in government—that is all it will be—they should take the action needed to address the workforce crisis in the immediate term, and we cannot solve that unless we resolve the NHS pay crisis.

    A third of public sector workers are actively considering leaving their jobs, and pay is a key factor in that. Key workers in our NHS still earn thousands of pounds a year less in real terms than in 2010. For example, nurses’ real pay is down by £5,200 compared with 2010, while hospital porters’ real pay is down by £2,500. Now the Government expect it to fall even further.

    Staff, however much they love their jobs, simply cannot afford to stay in them. Their pay is not covering their essentials. Hospitals are even having to open up food banks for staff. That falling pay is why, over the coming weeks, nursing staff and—it was announced today—ambulance staff will be taking industrial action. Nursing staff do not want to take action, but they feel they have been left with no choice because Government Ministers will not even meet them to discuss pay.

    Nurses hope that the Government will listen and open up the pay talks so that they do not have to go out on strike, but if they do strike, they will have public support and I will go and support them. It is not too late for the Government to avoid strikes. They have chosen strikes over negotiations, but they can stop this at any point. The Government need to open up the talks and they need to pay NHS workers properly. They need to give NHS workers the pay rise they deserve.

  • Daisy Cooper – 2022 Speech on the NHS Workforce

    Daisy Cooper – 2022 Speech on the NHS Workforce

    The speech made by Daisy Cooper, the Liberal Democrat MP for St Albans, in the House of Commons on 6 December 2022.

    Let us imagine what this debate could have been. If the former Prime Minister—the former former Prime Minister, I should say—had accepted the workforce amendment to the Health and Care Bill 13 months ago, this debate could have been so different. The Government could have crunched the numbers, NHS frontline workers would know that the cavalry was coming, and patients would be able to see light at the end of the tunnel. Instead, here we are as Members of Parliament with a roll-call of horror stories, because somehow, in 2022, waiting more than 12 hours for an ambulance is the new normal. How on earth has it come to this?

    We know that there are workforce problems in every part of our health and social care sector and every corner of our country, whether general practice, dentistry, pharmacies, midwifery, nursing—all are overstretched and understaffed. But it is midwives who send me their most distressed emails, because they often train for their dream job, only to be plagued by nightmares that they have not done enough to help new mothers and their babies in their time of need.

    Just last week I spoke with paramedics and other ambulance staff as I took a three-hour ride out with my local ambulance service. At 7 o’clock in the morning we were called to see the first patient. That patient had been waiting at home, on the floor, since 6 pm the night before—13 hours. Before we could get to see that patient, we were called to a more urgent call. When we finally got to the hospital with that second patient, the paramedics checked the list of patients who had arrived at the hospital. They were distressed that they had not been able to get to that first call, and wanted to make sure that another ambulance had done so. They were exhausted. They said that in a 12-hour shift they may get only one 20-minute break. They were exhausted because there are not enough staff.

    For most of my constituents, day in, day out, access to their GP really matters, and too many of them are struggling. That is no wonder, because the Government said they had a target of recruiting 6,000 more GPs, but they have admitted within three years that they will fail to meet that target. It is frustrating for patients, but it is also dangerous for GPs and their staff. This summer we heard reports from Walton-on-Thames in Surrey, where police had been called to a GP surgery because people were making threats of physical violence. That is surely unacceptable. Where is the urgent drive to recruit and retain our GPs?

    How on earth will we retain and motivate highly trained professionals when our hospitals are on the verge of collapse? Up and down the country there are hospitals in dire need of repair. In Eastbourne—I see the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Caroline Ansell) is in her place—there have been concerns for a long time about whether the hospital may or may not be coming. It was recently reported by some staff that they had been told—allegedly—that a new hospital was even a bare-faced lie.

    Caroline Ansell (Eastbourne) (Con)

    I thank the hon. Lady for advising me ahead of the debate that she might mention the hospital in my constituency. I am not sure of her particular interest in Eastbourne, although it was named by Time Out as its place to visit in 2023. For the benefit of those in my constituency who may be following this debate, am I pleased to share that, in relation to the workforce—the matter before us today—there has been a 25% increase in full-time staff over the past 10 years. That is a 10-year increase in nurses and midwives, a 10-year increase in doctors and dentists, and a 10-year increase in allied health professionals. They also report £20 million—[Interruption.]

    Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)

    Order. It is important to have fairly short interventions.

    Caroline Ansell

    Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Is the hon. Lady therefore pleased and relieved to hear that, despite staff concerns that there would not be a new hospital, there has been a run of incredibly positive meetings and we are assured that, in the words of the chief executive, “once-in-a-generation” investment is coming?

    Daisy Cooper

    The hon. Lady asks about my particular interest, and she will be aware that as the Liberal Democrat spokesperson for health and social care I have asked the Government on 10 occasions about releasing funds for my local trust, and other hospital trusts across the UK, for the new hospital programme that the Conservatives promised in 2019.

    Other hospital trusts are deeply concerned about the lack of progress on the new hospital programme. In Sutton, for example, St Helier Hospital was built before world war two. My own trust, West Hertfordshire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, which covers St Albans, Watford and Hemel Hempstead, has buildings that are life-expired. I have been there a number of times and seen the extraordinary work by professionals in my local hospital trust. We had the first virtual ward during the pandemic, and we have two robotics suites. We also have a lift that breaks down right next to the ward that treats children who are ill. When that lift breaks down, ambulances have to be stationed outside one side of the hospital so that they can drive around to the other side. This is completely unacceptable.

    Will the Minister confirm that all of those hospitals right across the UK—wherever they may be—will get the funding they were promised under the new hospital programme and that there will not be delays and penny-pinching? A Conservative Member no longer in his place asked where we would train all of the planned thousands more doctors and nurses. If there is any penny-pinching on the size of our new hospitals, they certainly will not get trained in our area.

    Our NHS and social care need people, tech, beds and buildings. There is no silver bullet to solving all of the issues in our NHS and social care, but getting some proper workforce planning in place would be the closest thing to that. That is why my Liberal Democrat colleagues and I are happy to support the motion.

  • Bell Ribeiro-Addy – 2022 Speech on the NHS Workforce

    Bell Ribeiro-Addy – 2022 Speech on the NHS Workforce

    The speech made by Bell Ribeiro-Addy, the Labour MP for Streatham, in the House of Commons on 6 December 2022.

    The importance of this debate should not be understated because the NHS is in a dire state, and that is largely the result of a severe staffing crisis. Other than the generally inept economic policies we have seen from the Government, there is no denying that the Brexit deal has had a direct impact on staffing numbers, and that chronically low pay and poor working conditions have resulted in an exodus of staff leaving the NHS to work in the private sector, work abroad or leave the healthcare profession entirely.

    I would like to start with one of the most undervalued groups in our NHS, which is the first that most of us meet in modern Britain—the midwife. The Royal College of Midwives has estimated that it has an existing and long-standing shortage of more than 2,000 midwives, and that for every 30 who are trained, NHS England loses 29. Vacancies for nurse positions are estimated to be at an all-time high, with a survey at the start of the year finding that 57% of nursing staff across healthcare settings are thinking about quitting or actively planning to quit their jobs.

    With figures such as these, we cannot blame existing staff for wanting to leave or blame others for not wanting to fill these vacancies, particularly when we see the TUC’s estimates that, since the Conservatives took office in 2010, midwives have had a total real-terms pay cut of £5,657, nurses’ pay is down by £4,310 in real terms and the pay of all doctors is down by about 7.4%. We cannot forget the thousands of non-medical staff, who are often overlooked, but are integral to keeping the NHS running. Cleaners, security guards, porters and other important workers have, along with other NHS staff, faced real-terms cuts in pay since 2010.

    Is it any wonder that the NHS waiting list has now tipped to over 7 million? When we hear of the scale of the vacancies, can we really be surprised that some A&E patients are left waiting for over 12 hours, or that ambulances are repeatedly failing to meet their target response times? The staffing crisis in the NHS is having a dire impact on patient safety, and if we are going to tackle the NHS backlog, address the crisis in staff recruitment and retention, and bring the NHS back to the standard it should be, we first and foremost have to address pay. We cannot be gaslighting nurses by saying that they should drop their pay demands to send a message to Putin, which is absolutely ridiculous.

    We have to pay nurses what they are worth, and if the Government were not aware of what they are worth, the pandemic should have shown them. We called them key workers because we could not do without them, yet the Government justify their pay by calling them low-skilled workers. There is no such thing as low-skilled work; there is only low-paid work. All work is skilled when it is done well, and our NHS staff are the best example of this. On the contrary, Ministers, who are paid multiple times more but who have shown little skill in running the country, if the cost of living crisis and the economic situation are anything to go by, are completely different. They get paid so much more, but we cannot see their sense of skill in running this country.

    In the past year, a number of NHS personnel have been taking strike action against low pay, and nurses will be striking later this month for the first time in the Royal College of Nursing’s 106-year history, while ambulance staff have announced their strike today. If that does not show us the scale of the crisis facing workers in the NHS, I do not know what does. No one wants to have to take strike action, least of all the workers in our NHS, but the dire situation of chronic underpayment and poor conditions is leaving them no choice. This Government have left them no choice. When we have 27% of NHS trusts operating food banks for their staff, when one in three nurses is taking out a loan to feed their family and when NHS staff across the board are severely underpaid, of course they are at the point of saying that enough is enough.

    No one goes to work for the NHS for the money, but it cannot be fair to expect people to live on poverty wages. If the Government want to address this crisis in recruitment and retention, they must get over this ideological aversion to paying public sector workers what they are worth. That means committing to a proper cost of living pay rise, and setting out plans to reverse a decade of real-term cuts in pay for our NHS workers.

  • Emma Hardy – 2022 Speech on the NHS Workforce

    Emma Hardy – 2022 Speech on the NHS Workforce

    The speech made by Emma Hardy, the Labour MP for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle, in the House of Commons on 6 December 2022.

    In Hull West and Hessle, 1,730 people are waiting more than 28 days to see a GP and 6,225 are waiting more than 14 days. The ratio of GPs to patients in Hull is one of the lowest in the country, which is fuelling some of the many problems that we are seeing in accident and emergency. That is combined with the concerns that I raised with the Secretary of State about the delay to discharge; the 30% vacancies in our adult healthcare sector; and the delay in money that the Government promised to adult healthcare services, which means that delays are only increasing. I am incredibly concerned about what will happen over the winter.

    I will focus my remarks on my concerns about radiotherapy, about which I have written to the Minister of State, Department of Health and Social Care, the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately). With respect, I wrote to her on 3 September and received a reply on 28 November, which is disappointing on such a serious matter. I raise that issue today because, in August, I received an update from the Humber and North Yorkshire cancer alliance about the state of radiotherapy. For those who are unfamiliar, radiotherapy is used to treat and kill cancer cells and to shrink tumours. It is often used in the early stages of cancer.

    In the briefing note that the Humber and North Yorkshire cancer alliance sent me, which I can only assume it sent to other Members of Parliament, it says:

    “It is expected that the radiotherapy position at HUTH will worsen through the year. The reduced capacity obviously could pose a risk to patients (from a health and wellbeing perspective, as well as from a patient experience perspective).”

    The reason it wrote to me to tell me of its concerns about radiotherapy is the shortages we have in the area. It says that the percentage of Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust patients who began radiotherapy as their first definitive treatment for cancer and who did so within 62 days of an urgent referral for suspected cancer—within 62 days of an urgent referral—was 22% in July, 50% in June and 29% in May, compared with over 50% previously. The percentage of HUTH patients who received radiotherapy following their first definitive treatment within the 31-day target was 44%. So the majority of people are not being seen for their cancer treatment within the 31-day target, and only 22% of people sent for urgent referrals for suspected cancer are being seen.

    The reason for this is given in the briefing note, which says:

    “Many of HUTH’s therapeutic radiographers have left the profession to pursue a better work-life balance, while those who have remained in their roles have also sought improved work-life balance by seeking roles closer to where they live to reduce commute times.”

    That is the reason people are leaving—to seek a better work-life balance. It is not because they do not care or they do not wish to continue to treat people, but because they simply cannot maintain it at this level. The note says that

    “staffing shortages is an issue experienced across the country.”

    It also says—this is a key point because the Government’s defence is often that the pandemic has caused all these problems:

    “Therapeutic radiography has been considered a vulnerable profession for years.”

    Pre-pandemic we were having problems with radiographers, but no action was taken, and this is still considered a problem right now.

    I wrote to the Minister and the Secretary of State about this, quoting from the briefing note. I sent the letter on 3 September, and I said:

    “I am sure you will agree that the evidently increased waiting time for potential life-saving or life-prolonging treatment is extremely concerning.”

    I understand that Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust is doing everything it possibly can. It has taken on two apprentices to be trained up as radiographers, but we all understand that we cannot instantly produce the radiographers we need. As I say, I sent the letter on 3 September, and it was also signed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) and my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner). It took the Minister until 28 November to reply, even though I started the letter by saying:

    “I am writing having received a very worrying update from the Humber and North Yorkshire Cancer Alliance regarding a reduction in services”

    in my constituency.

    In her reply, the Minister admitted:

    “HUTH advises that, to protect existing staff and maintain the service, it was necessary to reduce capacity to sustainable levels, which has in turn led to the inability to reach specific targets and a growing waiting list.”

    So this is a problem that the Government are well aware of, despite their delay in responding to it. It is a problem that has been around for years, and it is a problem that is literally a matter of life and death. If people do not get the cancer treatment they need when they need it, we know the consequences. The failure to deal with and address the NHS workforce is not just a mild inconvenience; it is an incredibly serious matter that has been a long time coming and a damning indictment of 12 years of Conservative mismanagement of our NHS.

  • Sam Tarry – 2022 Speech on the NHS Workforce

    Sam Tarry – 2022 Speech on the NHS Workforce

    The speech made by Sam Tarry, the Labour MP for Ilford South, in the House of Commons on 6 December 2022.

    For the first time in its 106-year history, the Royal College of Nursing has taken the monumental decision to take strike action. They have not taken that decision lightly, because no worker does, but this Government have pushed them to the brink. Ministers have had weeks to find a resolution, but they have rejected all offers of formal negotiations. As the RCN said, all meetings with the Government have seen Ministers sidestep the serious issues of NHS pay and patient safety. Do not be mistaken: they have the power and the responsibility to address this dispute, but they choose not to for self-serving political gains. They have seen that workers in rail, the Royal Mail, BT, universities and across the public and private sectors are now prepared to fight back because they are so sick of what this Government have been doing. They know full well that these disputes will have to end in pay rises for the workers of this country.

    These are not the days of the miners’ strikes when the mines could just be closed because they were not needed any more. We are always going to need hospitals, we are always going to need railways, we are always going to need schools and we are always going to need universities. People are beginning to fight back and stand up, and it is time that the Government listened very carefully, especially in their so-called red wall seats.

    At the height of the pandemic, every Thursday night the Prime Minister, the Health Secretary and Members across the House clapped for our NHS heroes and praised their immense effort on the frontline of the pandemic, but clapping does not pay a single bill. This dispute has highlighted the total hypocrisy at the heart of this Government. Once praised as heroes, nurses are now treated dreadfully. Ministers have sought to ratchet up the rhetoric, with the right hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi) seemingly seeking to present NHS workers as hostile agents of a foreign power, ludicrously and disgracefully dismissing industrial action as “helping Putin.” Get real! These are nurses, not agents of a foreign power. The Health Secretary has said that pay demands are “neither reasonable nor affordable”, while utterly refusing to engage with nurses’ unions over their demands, only offering a paltry 3% pay rise when inflation is well above 11%. According to The Times, instead of looking for a resolution to this dispute,

    “Ministers plan to wait for public sentiment to turn against striking nurses as the toll of disruption mounts over the winter”.

    Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)

    The hon. Gentleman talked about the difference between the pay offer and inflation. If all public sector workers were given a pay rise in line with inflation, it would cost the equivalent of a 4.5p rise in the basic rate of income tax. Does he support that, or would he pay for such big pay rises in other ways?

    Sam Tarry

    Our Front-Bench team have clearly set out a number of proposals, including taxing non-doms, which would seek to address the lack of funding in our NHS. I will not get into the specifics, but putting money into the pockets of ordinary people will clearly bring more revenue into the Treasury. The truth is that nurses have not had a real pay rise for more than a decade. The most experienced frontline nurses are now £10,000 a year worse off in real terms than in 2008, effectively meaning that they are working one day a week free of charge—how many days does the hon. Gentleman work free of charge?

    Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)

    The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful point about nurses. He will be aware that their role has evolved significantly and they are often now asked to do more training and more work on the same pay. Does he agree that it is unfair to demand more while paying the same?

    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?

    Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)

    You all have second jobs!

    Sam Tarry

    I do not think a single person sitting on the Opposition Benches has a second job.

    The truth is that NHS staff pay demands are reasonable and fair. Nurses’ pay is down by £4,300 and paramedics’ pay is down by £5,600. One in three nurses cannot afford to heat their homes or feed their families. NHS staff are at breaking point. When I met NHS Unite members from Guy’s and St Thomas’s Hospitals—I welcome any hon. Member to come with me and speak to them, because they are just across the river from this House—they were justifiably furious about the way that for too long, they and their colleagues have been exploited and abused by the Government, as they see it.

    Staff are the backbone of the NHS, and if they break, so does the NHS. As the RCN general secretary said:

    “Nursing staff have had enough of being taken for granted, enough of low pay and unsafe staffing levels, enough of not being able to give our patients the care they deserve.”

    Allowing the NHS to collapse will cost the country considerably more, financially and in national wellbeing—as we are already seeing on the Government’s watch—than the rightful pay demands of NHS staff. If our NHS is not providing the care that we need, the costs are far greater, as is economically demonstrable.

    Many hon. Members on both sides of the House believe that the NHS is our greatest institution. We cannot take it for granted and it is well worth fighting for. Conservative Members have the power to stop this dispute; to sit down with the trade unions; to face the nurses and NHS staff; and to negotiate a fair deal to prevent misery, ensure patient safety and save the NHS. If the Government will not do it, they should resign now, because a Labour Government will save the NHS and support NHS staff.

  • Taiwo Owatemi – 2022 Speech on the NHS Workforce

    Taiwo Owatemi – 2022 Speech on the NHS Workforce

    The speech made by Taiwo Owatemi, the Labour MP for Coventry North West, in the House of Commons on 6 December 2022.

    Many Members will remember that the Health and Social Care Committee recently published a report on the NHS workforce—a report that the Government frustratingly chose to ignore. As workforce shortages stand at unprecedented levels right across the NHS, with the latest figures revealing that there are more than 133,000 vacancies in England alone, I thought it might be useful to remind the Government of some of the report’s key recommendations.

    First, the Government are failing to provide our NHS nurses with the essentials that anyone would need to do their job properly. In short, they are serving up poor working conditions, year in, year out. At the bare minimum, all nurses across the NHS should have easy access to hot food and drink, free parking or easy access to work and spaces to rest, shower and change, but the Government cannot even get that right.

    I have repeatedly raised with the Department of Health and Social Care and the Prime Minister the fact that NHS staff at Coventry’s University Hospital are paying an astronomical £600 per year simply to park at work. In the middle of a cost of living crisis, it is outrageous that Coventry’s NHS heroes are out of pocket because the Government choose to do vanishingly little to improve their situation. I again call upon the Department of Health and Social Care to look closely at this situation and scrap these unfair parking charges for good.

    Is it really any surprise that the Government’s current target of recruiting 50,000 nurses has been woefully missed when they are treated so poorly? It is unacceptable that many NHS nurses are struggling to feed their families, pay their rent and heat their homes. Some nurses are even resorting to using food banks this winter. I urge the Government to look closely at how they can better pay and treat NHS staff this year and next, so that we can finally reverse this worrying trend.

    Our beloved NHS, which I had the honour of working for as a senior cancer pharmacist before being elected, is on its knees as a result of 12 years of Conservative neglect and mismanagement. Many services are crumbling. Pay has failed to keep up for years, and morale among nurses is in a truly terrible place. That is exactly why the Royal College of Nursing has been pushed into taking industrial action this month and why the Government must stop the mud-slinging and instead work with nurses to resolve this crisis.

    Secondly, the Government must take urgent action to improve maternity care. For over a decade, the Conservatives have failed midwives across my community, and now we are all paying the price. We need a robust, fully funded maternity workforce plan, and the Government must commit to recruiting and retaining the workforce at the level set out in the forthcoming report by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. Labour has made it crystal clear that we would train at least 10,000 additional nurses and midwives each year to tackle the crisis that currently exists in maternity care. Labour has also committed to a historic expansion of the NHS workforce, to plug the gaps created by this Government.

    The Government must also improve diversity in the recruitment of midwives, to improve the standard of care that black, Asian, mixed-race and minority ethnic women receive throughout pregnancy, birth and the post-natal period. By increasing diversity across the NHS, we can guarantee better standards of care for everyone, regardless of their background or ethnicity. Labour’s women and equalities team has routinely pushed for reforms that would improve how everyone experiences healthcare in this country, so when will the Government catch up?

    Lastly, as the newly elected chair of the all-party parliamentary pharmacy group, I want to highlight an opportunity that the Government have failed to grasp: better use of community pharmacists. As a trained pharmacist, I know that the sector is crying out for more responsibilities to become the first port of call for patients who need advice and treatment. That would help to rebalance the workload across primary care, bring healthcare back into the community, reduce the pressures on GPs and hospitals and deliver healthcare that is much more prevention focused.

    Any plan for the future of pharmacy must ensure that all pharmacists have adequate access to supervision and training, along with clear structures for professional career development into advanced and consultant-level practice to help to deliver this. That way, community pharmacists can play a much larger and more effective role in delivering healthcare. Until this Government properly mobilise pharmacies, we will struggle to reduce waiting times, clear NHS backlogs or improve patient access to GPs, so I desperately want to see action here. Every Member here today understands that our NHS workforce faces a range of big challenges. Whether it is nurses, midwives or pharmacists, our NHS workforce are at breaking point.

    Paul Bristow

    I completely share the hon. Lady’s sentiments about making better use of community pharmacists. She talked about better support and resources being available for pharmacists to do just that, but what specific things does she think need to happen to get the ball rolling?

    Taiwo Owatemi

    That is an excellent question. I could be here for hours explaining what I would like to see, but essentially, what I and many in the profession would like to see is an understanding and full use of the various skills that pharmacists have. We talked about this in the Health and Social Care Committee today: I would like pharmacists to be involved in providing clinical care—for example, a diabetes workshop or a cardio blood pressure workshop. We have seen other countries do that. In Alberta, Canada, community pharmacists are involved in the whole of the hypertension management; it is taken away from GPs and brought into the community, because it is more accessible in a community pharmacy.

    Whether it is nurses, midwives or pharmacists, our NHS workforce are at breaking point, but the Government are seemingly ignoring that. I hope that the Government urgently sit up, take note and look at how they plan to address our workforce needs, to ensure that our beloved NHS staff are no longer ignored.