Nursing numbers falling to dangerous levels

There are today close to 6,000 fewer nurses in the NHS than when this Government came to power. As a result, too many hospitals in England do not have safe staffing levels.

I have repeatedly warned the Government about nurse numbers falling to dangerous levels. This new focus on recruitment is overdue but it shouldn’t have taken this long and it won’t be enough to repair the damage of three years of falling nurse numbers on David Cameron’s watch. He is allowing the NHS to go into a dangerous winter with a shortage of nurses and with increasing numbers of older people being admitted because of this Government’s deep cuts in social care.

Labour is committed to safe staffing levels in hospitals based on expert advice. The Government is yet to deliver a convincing plan for bringing all hospitals in England back up to safe staffing levels.

RCN Frontline First report on 61,000 job losses

Whilst David Cameron wastes billions on back-office restructuring, the front-line of the NHS is taking a battering.  

Ambulances are once again queuing up outside A&Es across England. In many hospitals there are simply not enough qualified nurses on the ground and healthcare assistants are increasingly being used to cover nurses’ roles.  

Since David Cameron walked through the door of 10 Downing Street, over six thousand nursing posts have been lost. At the same time, he has spent £1 billion on redundancy packages for managers. Six-figure pay-outs to managers; P45s to nurses – what clearer illustration could there be of a Government with its priorities completely wrong? 

The truth is that this Government has de-stabilised the NHS with a re-organisation nobody wanted and two years of real-terms spending cuts. It is this deadly combination of cuts and re-organisation that has proved toxic for the NHS and left it in a critical condition.  

Ministers are taking unacceptable risks with standards of patient care and they cannot continue to ignore the warnings from nurses’ and doctors’ leaders. They must urgently intervene to protect the NHS front-line as it cannot safely sustain job losses at this level.