Justin
Madders MP, Labour’s Shadow Health Minister, responding to the latest NHS vacancy data, said:

“Theresa May
has overseen an unprecedented workforce crisis in our NHS, with over 100,000
vacancies across the system. These latest figures reveal in the starkest
fashion how serious shortages have become, with new trainees put off from
joining and existing nurses increasingly retiring early.

“Even in her
own backyard, the situation is desperate. Thames Valley managed to hire just
five nurses for 1,957 advertised posts – just one in 400. On the day her own
Foreign Secretary has called for emergency funding, Theresa May must get an
urgent grip of this escalating chaos in our NHS.”

Ends

Barbara
Keeley MP, Labour’s Shadow Cabinet Minister for Mental Health, commenting on the rise in Mental
Health Act detentions, said:

“There is no
doubt that severe Tory cuts to the community services that intervene before
people’s mental health reaches crisis point, alongside cuts to other local
treatments have contributed massively to the rise in detentions.

“The Tories
have undone improvements seen under the last Labour Government in reducing
detentions, achieved by building teams to intervene early in cases of psychosis
and by providing crisis and home resolution treatment.

“It’s time
the Tories faced up to the damage they have done to mental health services and
immediately invest in and ring-fence mental health budgets, as Labour has
pledged.”

Ends

23 January 2018

Caroline Lucas, the co-leader of the Green Party, has slammed ‘brass neck Boris’ for his stance on the NHS. Lucas called Johnson’s intervention ‘self-aggrandising of the worst kind’ and pointed to his role in damaging the NHS [1].

Caroline Lucas said:

“It seems that brass neck Boris has struck again. Not only does this brexiteer-in-chief keep repeating lies about mythical savings from leaving the EU, but now he’s trying to position himself as a saviour of the NHS after his party’s extreme brexit stance has caused EU nurses to leave the UK in droves.

“The crisis in the NHS is the fault of the Conservative Party. For Boris to suddenly chime in with platitudes for the health service he’s playing a part in dismantling is self-aggrandising of the worst kind.” 

ENDS

Contact: Matthew Butcher on 07885 459 904 or clucasmedia@parliament.uk

[1] For example the number of nurses and midwives coming to work in Britain from Europe has plunged by 89% since the UK voted to leave the EU.

The sharp fall coincided with a sudden increase in qualified European medics leaving the Nursing and Midwifery Council’s (NMC) register: from 2,435 in 2015-16 to 4,067 in the last year – a rise of 67%.

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