NHS: Staff Numbers Debate
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Baroness Merron
Main Page: Baroness Merron (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Baroness Merron's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(8 months, 1 week ago)
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Baroness Merron (Lab)
My Lords, the Government’s workforce plan is silent on having enough properly maintained treatment facilities, buildings and equipment, all of which have become increasingly inadequate. Could the Minister confirm what assessment has been made of the physical capacity requirements to deliver the NHS workforce plan? How will he ensure that staff have what they need to do their job?
Lord Markham (Con)
The noble Baroness is absolutely correct: a workforce plan needs to be backed up with the physical real estate to deliver it. As noble Lords are aware, I am responsible for the new hospitals programme, which is part of that. In primary care, much of the long-term workforce plan is all about getting upstream of the problem in terms of prevention, and clearly we need to make sure that the physical real estate is there to support that. So the next steps will be to make sure that the capital meets the long-term workforce plan.