Nursing Workforce Shortage: England

Chris Elmore Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd March 2020 Westminster Hall

[Mohammad Yasin]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. There are nursing shortages in every part of the country, and nurses are struggling to provide good care. I will come to that point in a moment.

Nursing shortages also impact on staff wellbeing. One testimony from an emergency nurse describes the realities of working in the profession:

“When I witnessed elderly patients being assisted onto bed pans while on ambulance trolleys, surrounded by paramedics, other patients on trolleys, and relatives all squashed in a freezing corridor…I realised that I can no longer preserve or protect my patient’s dignity, and that I am failing them as a nurse. Dignity is the first thing that the patients are stripped of when in a queue in a dark, cold corridor, closely followed by safety.”

Sharon, a community nurse who recently responded to a House of Commons digital debate on this Westminster Hall debate, said:

“I have worked in my locality for four and a half years. In that time, we have never been fully staffed. This puts enormous pressure on the whole team and many people have left because of it. Often, we are rushed, we forget things, and we cannot give the quality of care that we would like as we are just too thinly spread. Many of us end catching up on our notes or management at home, working way over our contracted hours. We are exhausted, frustrated and disappointed.”

This is an appalling situation for all concerned, and I know from these responses that this happens daily in hospitals up and down the country. Talk of a winter crisis is meaningless when staff and patients experience crisis every day, all year round. We must all focus on fixing this.

There is a long-term plan for the NHS, but its ambitions are dependent on having enough nurses. We have no funded workforce plan, even though it was promised by the Government when they announced the funding allocations back in the summer of 2018. Will the Minister tell us when the long-promised NHS people plan will be published, and whether it will include bold and funded policies to recruit, train and retain vital nursing staff to meet the needs of our population?

Nursing students in England can receive grants of up to £5,000 a year, and for some they can go up to £8,000. However, these do not reflect the true cost of living. Just as importantly, tuition fees are also a huge burden on nursing students, and it is important that this is addressed in the forthcoming Budget. As a father of four, I believe that financial barriers to education must be removed.

[Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend makes some important points about the pressures facing nursing in England and the cost of living. Does he agree that one way that this could be resolved is by supporting bursaries and offering more financial support to student nurses? The Welsh Labour Government have kept those throughout this entire period, ensuring that the bursary was not scrapped in Wales.

[Mohammad Yasin]

My hon. Friend is right. Cuts to bursaries have impacted hugely on the recruitment of new staff. The Welsh Government did the right thing in a difficult situation. If we do not look after our staff, it will be hard for them to stay in the profession. That is why we have a shortage of nurses.

As a father of four children, I believe that financial barriers to education must be removed so that everyone who wants to go to university can do so, particularly those who want to become nurses. We should encourage young people to train in these critical professions. Why are the Government putting up barriers to young people who will go on to contribute such vital services to society and saddling them with huge debts before they have begun working?

This problem has been years in the making. Such stark shortages do not occur out of the blue. In England these shortages are due to the complexities of political decisions and structural issues.