Sunak Vows Major NHS Recruitment in Bid to Win Back Voters
(Bloomberg) -- Rishi Sunak unveiled his long-awaited plan to recruit record numbers of doctors and nurses, as he seeks to win back voters who blame his ruling UK Conservatives for the crisis facing the National Health Service.
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The blueprint to both recruit and retain NHS workers could see an extra 60,000 doctors, 170,000 more nurses and 71,000 more health staff in place by 2036-37, NHS England said in a report on Friday. That will help the service, which assesses and treats everyone in the country an equivalent ten times a year on average, meet the challenges of a growing and aging population, it said.
With the next general election due by January 2025 at the latest, Sunak’s NHS workforce plan is effectively a Conservative Party manifesto pledge, given there is little time for it to yield major benefits before voters go to the ballot box. It is an attempt to seize the agenda from the poll-leading opposition Labour Party, which has already set out its own plans to boost NHS numbers.
Read more: Britain’s Cherished NHS Wrestles With Its ‘Reform or Die’ Moment
“You can trust this government with the NHS,” Sunak said in a televised press conference, calling the plan “one of the most significant things I’ll do as prime minister.”
Yet his pledge to boost NHS numbers could also play into Labour’s hands by taking a favorite Conservative attack line — that Labour overspends and is too wedded to the public sector — off the table. Having founded the NHS after World War II, Labour typically retains more public confidence to protect the service.
The challenge facing Sunak over voter skepticism is exacerbated by the deep-rooted problems within the NHS that have taken hold during 13 years of Conservative-led governments. Waiting lists for routine hospital treatment in England reached a record 7.4 million this month, while an unprecedented wave of industrial action has laid bare the dire state of workforce morale.
There are more than 110,000 vacancies, as more staff leave the NHS to work in countries including Australia and New Zealand. Even the government predicts that number could grow to 360,000 by 2037 without action.
The UK has “strikingly low levels of key clinical staff” compared to 19 similar countries, the King’s Fund health think tank reported this week. Britain has fewer doctors and nurses per head than most of its peers, and relies more heavily on internationally trained staff, it said.
“We haven’t yet seen the detail of how this funding will be phased – and whether it will be sustained – over many years,” Richard Murray, chief executive of the King’s Fund, said of the government’s statement on Thursday. “Delivery of the wider ambitions of the plan will need sustained investment, and therefore will rest on any future governments throwing their weight behind the strategy, to give the NHS the support and stability it needs.”
Sunak sees an improved NHS, which marks its 75th anniversary next week, as essential for the Tories to have a chance of holding onto power. He has made cutting waiting lists — a slogan that was also on his podium during the press conference — one of the five pledges he wants voters to judge him on.
Read More: Sunak Risks Failing on His Five Key UK Pledges at Halfway Point
While he was speaking, radiographers across England announced they would strike for the first time since 2014, underscoring that even as Sunak tries to map out a long-term strategy, the short-term crisis is mounting.
About 600,000 hospital appointments have been canceled since December due to industrial action. Junior doctors in England will strike for five consecutive days over pay next month — the longest single walkout in NHS history. Senior doctors, known as consultants, also plan to strike for two days next month.
The premier insisted the government is making progress, cutting the number of patients waiting more than 18 months for treatment. But he also warned that the government is not about to take out the checkbook to end the strikes. “I’d ask everyone to recognize the economic context that we’re in,” he said.
He also said the NHS plan will mean there are “other things that we can’t afford,” a reference to his other pledge to restore the public coffers to health.
The NHS strategy, delayed for months amid reports of a row between the Treasury and health department over costs, will be scrutinized carefully by health leaders. They have warned that resolving shortages is not only about recruiting new staff, but working harder to retain existing workers.
Along with more doctors and nurses, the proposal is for trainees to be placed on wards and in practices sooner and for new medical schools to open in areas with the biggest staffing shortfalls.
The aim is to reduce the bill for agency workers which could save around £10 billion ($12.6 billion) between 2030-31 and 2036-37, NHS England said. The government has promised £2.4 billion of additional funding over five years for the expansion of education and training.
Medical bodies including the Royal College of GPs representing family doctors, NHS Providers which speaks for health trusts, and patients’ group Healthwatch England said they supported the plan. Many, however, were keen to see further detail and some warned over the lack of plans on social care — where elderly and vulnerable people are looked after in the community.
“The absence of proposals to mend social care is perhaps the biggest gap,” said Sara Gorton, head of health at the Unison union. “Without action to fix care, the NHS will have to go on picking up the pieces of that broken system.”
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But it’s the timeframe set out in NHS plan which reveals the biggest problem facing Sunak: how to stay in Downing Street long enough to enact it. Polls indicate that his push to brand the government as a fresh start is not working, and that it’s the Tories’ legacy since 2010 that voters are fed up with.
“They should have done this a decade ago,” said Labour’s health spokesman Wes Streeting. “Then the NHS would have enough staff today.”
--With assistance from Ellen Milligan, Alex Morales and Asad Zulfiqar.
(Updates with Sunak comments from fourth paragraph.)
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