NHS Long-term Workforce Plan

Debate between Steve Barclay and Margaret Greenwood

Monday 3rd July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

To take the hon. Gentleman’s first point, the plan does not get into individual specialties. That was a Health Committee recommendation, which I have discussed with the Committee’s Chair, my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine). There is a clear reason for that. Within the framework of numbers, the impact of AI and service design will evolve over the 15 years, so it is right that we commit to the number and then the NHS take that work forward with individual specialities and have discussions with the royal colleges.

The hon. Gentleman made a perfectly valid point about boosting capacity. We have already rolled out 108 of the 160 community diagnostic centres that we have committed to deliver. We are also looking to innovate, and I will give two practical examples. Our deal with Moderna, which is looking at individual bespoke vaccines for hard to treat cancers such as pancreatic cancer, will allow us to get ahead on that. We are already seeing a significant reduction in cervical cancer as a result of prevention measures. Likewise, by going into deprived communities with a high preponderance of smoking, the lung cancer screening programme is detecting lung cancer, which often presents late, much earlier, which in turn is having a significant impact on survival rates.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

I recently met a constituent who raised the issue of children’s oral health and shared with me her concerns about the staffing crisis in specialist paediatric dentistry. According to the Government’s own statistics, which were released in March, 29.3% of five-year-olds in England have enamel and/or dentinal decay, and the figure was as high as 38.7% in the north-west. The workforce plan talks of expanding dentistry training places by 24% by 2028-29, and by 40% by 2031-32. I note the Secretary of State’s response to my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame Morris). However, there is no specific mention of specialist paediatric dentistry in the plan, so what will the Secretary of State do to help those children who are desperate for specialist dental treatment right now?

[Steve Barclay]

Without repeating my previous answer on specialty, we are boosting a number of areas. There are 5,000 more doctors and almost 13,000 more nurses this year than last year. I have already touched on increasing the numbers in primary care. There are 44,000 more nurses, so we are on track to deliver our manifesto target of 50,000. There are 25% more within the workforce of the NHS compared with 2010. We are boosting the workforce overall. The plan is iterative and further work will go into which specialities are developed and how resource is prioritised as services are redesigned.

NHS Strikes

Debate between Steve Barclay and Margaret Greenwood

Monday 17th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

My right hon. Friend makes an extremely important point. Patient safety should come first for all parties in this dispute. That is why I urge the Royal College of Nursing to wait for the NHS Staff Council decision on the offer. Voting is still ongoing, and it would be premature to announce strike action ahead of that decision.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

Nurses and junior doctors are being pushed to breaking point, because there simply are not enough of them, and the Government have failed to plan the workforce properly. A nurse I spoke to at the weekend told of the terrible queues in corridors, and said that patients were waiting in pain, and not in the dignified environment that they should be in. She also spoke of the lack of care packages to enable the safe discharge of many patients. Why are we still waiting for the NHS workforce plan, which the Government promised? Can the Secretary of State tell us on what date we can expect to hear a statement on it? Also, what urgent action will he take to address the social care crisis?

[Steve Barclay]

On social care, which relates to the hon. Lady’s point about discharge, she will recall that in the autumn statement the Chancellor put additional funding into adult social care—funding of up to £7.5 billion over two years, which is the largest ever increase in funding for social care. Also, I announced at the Dispatch Box in early January a reprioritisation of funding in the Department—it was a £250-million package—in the light of urgent and emergency care pressure. That included funding to support greater discharge, to get more flow. I touched on the workforce plan earlier. We will publish it shortly; in the autumn statement, the Chancellor committed to doing so.

NHS: Long-term Strategy

Debate between Steve Barclay and Margaret Greenwood

Wednesday 11th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

My right hon. Friend raises an extremely important matter. I was in the Department when the current Chancellor was Secretary of State and when we made that commitment to a 25% expansion in medical undergraduate places. She is absolutely right in saying that it takes time for those cohorts to come through. She is also right that Chelmsford has been a huge success. I am sure that, in the context of the workforce strategy that NHS England colleagues are bringing forward, she will make the case for where any additional capacity should go, but we will, of course, look to that workforce strategy to map out what is needed.

Let me turn to elective care backlogs. A number of Members across the House have raised the issue of the 7.2 million people on the waiting list. I think that it is worth breaking that figure down between the 1 million who require surgery and the 6 million who are waiting for outpatient appointments—either for their first appointment or for their follow-up. The NHS is doing more than 94 million outpatient appointments a year, of which 30 million are for new patients and 64 million are follow-ups. The “did not attend” rate is about 6.5%. This relates to the question of my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) about value for money and how we deliver the reform of which he spoke. If we halved the “did not attend” rate of about 6.5%, it would free up almost 4 million slots. I am very interested in looking at the data and at how we prioritise within that data the wider challenge around the elective care backlog. I hope that that provides him with some reassurance.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Steve Barclay]

Yes, I will.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Before the intervention is taken, I advise Members that there is a lot of interest in this debate, and each intervention is cutting into the contributions that can be made. We will be down to a three-minute limit very quickly, and some people still may not get in.

[Margaret Greenwood]

I wish to bring the Secretary of State back to the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams), who pointed out that in the Health and Social Care Act 2012, the coalition Government legislated to allow NHS hospitals to make up to 49% of their money from private patients. She asked whether he regretted that, but we did not get a response, so I would like to hear the Secretary of State’s response. Will he also tell us what assessment he has made of the impact on waiting lists of non-NHS patients taking the place of NHS patients in our hospitals?

[Steve Barclay]

It is a good thing to be bringing more funding into healthcare rather than turning it away. However, conscious of your edict, Mr Deputy Speaker, I will truncate some of the areas that I was going to cover, because I am sure that right hon. and hon. Members will bring out some of those points in the wider debate.

Labour’s motion ignores the statement that I gave to the House on Monday. It ignores the extra funding that we provided in the autumn statement and the commitment reflected in the Downing Street summit on Saturday to publish recovery plans for urgent and emergency care and for primary care, which we will do in the weeks ahead. The motion ignores the very real health challenges being experienced across the United Kingdom in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, which all face pressures. It ignores the fact that France, Germany and elsewhere in Europe also face significant pressure.

The Government recognise, as I set out to the House on Monday, that there are real challenges in the NHS and social care. That is why we set out a three-phase approach: first, taking immediate steps to reintroduce flow to relieve pressure in the emergency department and across the hospital estate; secondly, putting in more capacity to build greater resilience over the course of the year, mindful of the fact that summer is increasingly a busy period—more so than was traditionally the case; and thirdly, making investments in our life science industry, such as the deals with Moderna and BioNTech, to ensure that patients in the UK get the most innovative drugs at the earliest date. That shows the Government’s commitment to backing the NHS now and in the future, which is why I commend the amendment to the motion to the House.

NHS Workforce

Debate between Steve Barclay and Margaret Greenwood

Tuesday 6th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. The Government have increased the funding, which will be used in new, innovative ways to deal with the huge challenge we face as a consequence of the pandemic. That is why we have the elective recovery plan, on which we hit our first milestone over the summer in terms of two-year waits. We have rolled out 91 community diagnostic centres, which have delivered more than 2 million tests and scans.

The workforce is, of course, a vital component of this mission, which is why the ambulance workforce has increased by more than 40% since 2010, but we recognise there are significant pressures, particularly as a consequence of delayed discharges, which are having such an impact on the wards and in A&E. That reads across into the challenge of ambulance handover delays.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

I have spoken to nurses who tell me that, when they get to the end of a shift, insufficient staff arrive for the night shift, so they have to hang on. They are working extra hours without being paid because of the shortage of staff. What would the Secretary of State say to them? They are in such a stressful situation. They want to ensure the safety of their patients, but they simply do not have sufficient colleagues to do so.

[Steve Barclay]

The hon. Lady raises a fair point. Nurses are under huge pressure, and I want to say how much we respect and value the work they do. The pandemic has placed huge strain on the NHS, which manifests in the pressures staff face. I am ready to speak further to trade unions about many of these issues and their impact on staff—there are sometimes concerns about safety and staffing levels—and about how we can have better investment in tech and the NHS estate.

I was up in Liverpool the week before last, and £800 million has gone into the Royal Liverpool Hospital. What a difference that is making to working conditions. We need to see more of that investment elsewhere. A range of things are contributing to the very real pressures staff face, which is why we have committed to investment in capital, both on the estate and in areas such as tech, which can make such a difference to working conditions.

Public Health Restrictions: Government Economic Support

Debate between Steve Barclay and Margaret Greenwood

Tuesday 13th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

My hon. Friend raises a good point, and it speaks to the point raised on youth unemployment a moment ago. We have invested £2 billion in the kickstart scheme. We are tripling traineeships. We have the £2,000 for firms taking on apprenticeships. That is something that the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is particularly focused on, as well as the doubling of work coaches. Linked to that is our investment in green jobs through net zero and the package that was announced by the Chancellor, including the decarbonisation of public buildings and homes and the creation of green jobs. We are bringing forward the £5 billion infrastructure package that the Prime Minister announced the week before the summer economic update. We then need to link those jobs to skills through schemes such as the kickstart, so that for those who are not able to retain their jobs, we are able to get them into the new jobs of the future.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab) [V]]

It is important that the Government understand the reality of people’s lives as new restrictions are introduced. Figures from the Low Pay Commission show that around 1,800 people in Wirral West are paid at or around the minimum wage. Many people on low pay work in bars and restaurants, and I am very concerned about the impact that the new restrictions will have on their ability to pay their bills. What action will the Government take to ensure that working people in Wirral West do not face poverty as a result of these new measures?

[Steve Barclay]

The hon. Lady is right to highlight that worry that many people have, particularly with the additional announcements. That is why we have taken the action we have, with the additional £7 billion into welfare to enable universal credit to top-up where there is an impact on people’s wages. That combination of the job support scheme and universal credit speaks exactly to the concerns she raises.

NHS Winter Crisis

Debate between Steve Barclay and Margaret Greenwood

Monday 5th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Barclay]

The hon. Gentleman makes quite a serious allegation of my misleading the House. What I was very clear about is that there has been a 35% increase in attendances at A&E as a result of flu this year compared with last year, and that around 3,000 beds are currently occupied by patients with flu and around 700 beds are occupied by those with norovirus. Clearly, that has resulted in significant seasonal pressures this year, which have placed strain on the system. That was recognised by the Government in the additional funding that was put in place. It was recognised by the NHS, as Sir Bruce Keogh set out in the early planning that was undertaken, and it is simply wrong for the hon. Gentleman to ignore the impact of flu this year, given the way that in 2009 the then Opposition were very responsible in recognising its impact.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

Can the Minister confirm that accountable care organisations, accountable care services and place-based care are being rebranded as integrated care services? Will he explain whether there is actually any difference between those terms, and will he do all he can to ensure that Members in this House are given the opportunity to scrutinise them, as I believe that they are here to act as a Trojan horse to bring in the break-up and privatisation of the national health service?

[Stephen Barclay]

We continually hear this myth about privatisation. The reality is that this Government appointed to run NHS England, first, Sir David Nicholson, who had previously been appointed by the Labour party, and then Sir Simon Stevens, who has worked for both sides of the House. Numbers show that the level of private healthcare provision has not changed this year compared with last year. I understand that the Health Committee is due to look into ACOs and integration within a matter of weeks as part of its deliberations, and I very much look forward to reading the conclusions in that Committee’s report.