Oral Answers to Questions

Tommy Sheppard Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Davies (Grantham and Stamford) (Con)]

What progress his Department has made on ensuring the provision of adequate critical care capacity in hospitals during the covid-19 outbreak.

[Tommy Sheppard (Edinburgh East) (SNP)]

What plans he has to ensure that the NHS has the capacity to tackle the next phase of the covid-19 outbreak.

[The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Matt Hancock)]

Thanks to unprecedented action, we have protected the NHS. It was not overwhelmed during the peak of this crisis, and all covid-19 patients admitted to hospital were able to receive urgent treatment that they needed. We remain vigilant.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Hancock]

Thanks to my hon. Friend’s assiduous work on behalf of his constituents in Grantham, and at his suggestion, I discussed this issue directly with NHS officials. Grantham’s unit will be open, 24/7, as an urgent treatment centre; this is part of plans to ensure that covid and non-covid services are kept as separate as possible. In addition, thanks to his intervention, we will ensure that that position will be reviewed quarterly.

[Tommy Sheppard [V]]

The NHS in England had more than 40,000 nursing vacancies at the start of the covid pandemic, but student nurses stepped forward to contribute to the response. So why are many of their contracts now being terminated, given that they may well be needed this autumn? Would a better approach not be to increase nursing bursaries to £10,000, as they are in Scotland, where nursing vacancies are half those of England?

[Matt Hancock]

We have increased by about 10,000 the number of nurses in the NHS in the past year, and during the crisis that number increased further. We also set out at the start how we are paying student nurses, as they stepped up to the mark, as the hon. Gentleman rightly said. I am delighted that so many of them did, and we are sticking to the agreements that we set out with the student nurses at the start of the crisis.