Lib Dems respond to Health Foundation report on NHS staffing crisis
Responding to a report by the Health Foundation on the severe shortage of nurses facing the NHS, Liberal Democrat Shadow Secretary for Health, Well-being and Social Care Luciana Berger said:
This report is clear –there are serious NHS staffing gaps. The NHS is under significant pressure and there are serious questions about the quality and safety of care that patients are receiving today.
Without doctors and nurses from abroad coming to work in our hospitals, the NHS is sunk. Yet Boris Johnson’s plans for a Nurse Tax would mean EU nurses and other health professionals have to pay to work in the NHS.
Either a Conservative Brexit or a Labour Brexit would make the staffing crisis worse by driving away the EU health professionals we need.
Liberal Democrats would stop Brexit to support our NHS workforce, introduce an NHS recruitment strategy and invest £7 billion a year in health and social care.
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Occasionally as you wonder through Google you run into an article that really deserves a wider audience, this is one.
When the UK’s annual mid-year population estimates were released in late June 2019, much of the media coverage focused on the fact that the population had risen, but growth rates had stalled. The Express newspaper reported that the total population rise of just under 400,000 in the year to mid-2018 was still fuelled by immigration, and that: “The surge is the equivalent of adding a city the size of Coventry to the country.”
But what reporting on this data missed were the 623,000 deaths in the year to mid-2018. This was 20,000 more than the previous year—a 3 per cent increase. That is startling because it continues a rise in mortality that began with the first significant fall in UK life expectancy in 2014 and means that UK life expectancy will still be lower today than it was then, five long years ago.
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/mortality-rates-are-on-the-rise-in-the-uk-so-why-is-no-one-talking-about-it
It also encapsulates in a way Brexit. The Brexit supporting Express fear mongers on the number of immigrants, while totally missing the main point, people ( including their readership) are dying younger. No readership my dear Express no paper simples. Life for most is quite simply getting worse, they are looking for simple no cost solution and the likes of Depeffle are selling them that, trouble is they won’t work and then what? What snake oil salesman will replace Depeffle with his ( it will probably be a man ) new improved even more toxic snake oil.
Without doctors and nurses from abroad coming to work in our hospitals, the NHS is sunk.
Why do the LibDems keep shooting themselves in the foot?
A brief look at the ONS data shows that the UK has a vast reserve of people “not economically active”; we need to get (some of) these people “economically active”, doing so requires no additional housing, welfare spend, schools etc.
It also directly addresses the immigration and communities concerns people on-the-street were raising that caused many to vote ‘Leave’ back in 2016.
So the real reason why the NHS will be sunk because successive governments have failed to make the necessary investments in UK-based training etc. leading to the current situation where the NHS is over dependent on staff coming from abroad; due in part to their myopic focus on reducing direct costs (training and salaries), whilst forgetting the indirect costs (welfare and deprivation/regeneration spend).
If the LibDems really want some of those who voted Leave in 2016 to vote for them then they need to start framing their policies in ways that will appeal to them.
Population passing away younger. More nurses and doctors required and yet a medical training school in Londonderry is SHELVED starving the country of future doctors AND at the same time charging for people to come from abroad. Less and less doctors and nurses putting further pressure on the NHS till it collapses and the the US wolves step in??
To become ‘economically active’ you need training centres to be opened up so that our own people can be used as nurses etc.YOU DO NOT SHELVE TRAINING CENTRES,The Tories want cheap ways of doing things NOT sensible moves.
It has been the UK policy for decades to raid the world for skills and labour. In the 50’s the Caribbean, in the 60’s India and Pakistan, lately it has been the EU. The problem they have is they’ve effectively shut the door on the EU and now they are hoping to pick up the skills they need from India, Pakistan, Philippines et al. What they don’t intend to do is invest in training people already resident in the UK, that costs far too much. So if you voted Brexit to keep down immigration unlucky that isn’t the Brexit on offer.
To expect EU immigration can plug the gaps in the NHS is to misunderstand the point of the EU. It isn’t intended to be a migration union to cover the gaps in western countries’ education systems, it’s intended to level countries up by enabling them to trade with each other and its starting to get there.
The total number of Slovaks working in Austria fell by 20% last year and that has nothing to do with Brexit. As the economies of E. Europe grow there just isn’t a pressing enough reason to bring up your kids in a foreign country hundreds of miles away from their grandparents.
With the baby-boomers hitting end of life period, tThe shortage of medical staff is going to a massive problem for all EU countries over the next decade
Wrt life expectancy, the 2014 figures were significantly higher than normal for France, Britain, Germany, Holland and so on. The 2015 figures were back to normal, so that meant the first decline in a while for all those countries too. It probably had more to do with the north european weather and flu infections in 2014 than anything in the politics of all those countries simultaneously.
The Guardian has reported net immigration
from EU year ending June 2019 is wait for it, wait for it, 48,000 total none EU net immigration is 229,000. O well so much for stopping free movement ending the mass immigration many a brave Brexiteer worried so much about. Personally I would not be surprised if EU immigration was now negative. Certainly a lot of the Poles and assorted other Eastern Europeans who worked with my son are now working in the booming East of the EU. Apparently the weather is better, your salary goes further and the money they saved can be used to buy things they wanted.
Well said Frankie, the Brexiteers will have to find out the hardway that they are being manipulated by the right wing Tory supporting press. Good luck to them they are going to need it.
Barry Lofty, I wish you were right, but experience tells me that the right wing Tory supporting press will ensure that Brexiteers will blame us for their leaders’ mistakes. Just look at Scotland – SNP make a mess of so many things –> blame the English –> demand more freedoms –> their poll ratings rise.
There won’t be an automatic conversion for them to an “Oh gosh I wish I hadn’t supported that.” That is why from a social cohesion viewpoint, Brexit will be very bad whether we leave or we stay.
David Evans, I have to confess you are right in your appraisal about the fall out from this Brexit mess, thanks a bundle David Cameron!!!