Revive the NHS

I commend the extraordinary work of NHS staff in our constituency and across the country. Day in, day out, they make an incredible contribution to our health service. We owe them our full support.

Despite their heroic efforts, I am concerned that twelve years of Government mismanagement has resulted in record waiting lists for care and chronic staff shortages. A recent cross-party report said Ministers have shown a marked reluctance to act decisively on workforce challenges, with persistent underfunding posing a “serious risk to staff and patient safety”.

Without the much needed investment and support for the NHS workforce, health services across England will be unable to recover lost capacity, address growing backlogs or bring down waiting lists.

I am pleased the Opposition has set out its plan to deliver one of the biggest expansions of the NHS workforce in its history: doubling medical school places to 15,000; creating 10,000 more nursing and midwifery placements every year; doubling the number of district nurses trained every year; and training 5,000 more health visitors. The plan would be funded by ending the non-domiciled tax status regime, which economists at the London School of Economics and Warwick University estimate would raise more than £3.2 billion every year.

We must also focus efforts on retaining current staff, valuing the workforce through fair pay and conditions, and ending the absurdity of pension rules that force many doctors to retire early or make it more difficult to return to the NHS after retirement.

Putting patient safety and safe staffing levels at the heart of workforce planning is vital for the future of our health service. So to ensure the NHS always has the staff it needs, I also support the creation of a new arm’s-length body tasked with producing independent workforce projections, as well as creating new career paths into the NHS.

We must recruit, retain and train the staff our health service needs to bring down record waiting lists and deliver safe, high-quality services. This is not just a moral imperative; it is crucial for the future functioning of our NHS.