Jonathan Ashworth responds to the workforce plan

Jonathan Ashworth MP, Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary, responding to the workforce plan, said:

“Labour welcomes any proposals that, as we have called for, genuinely
improve staff wellbeing but overall this report is thin gruel ducking
the big challenges of how to solve an escalating staffing crisis because
Tory ministers have refused to back up the plan with the cash that is
so desperately needed.

“As Dido Harding’s report hints at, scrapping the bursary, cuts to
career development budgets, pay restraint and ongoing austerity means
the NHS is left struggling with 100,000 staff shortages including 40,000
nurses and 10,000 doctors. The consequence is patient safety at risk
and poorer standards of care.

“Expected recommendations to recruit 5,000 nurses a year internationally have mysteriously vanished from the final draft.

“Without immediate determined action, backed up by investment, the NHS workforce crisis will only get worse.

“Ministers should have today announced they were restoring the
bursary, reversing cuts to training budgets, and legislating for safe
staffing on wards. Instead, we have a government in meltdown and a
Health Secretary jockeying for a prominent role in the next Tory
Cabinet. Only Labour will properly deal with the workforce problems our
NHS face.”