UK Parliament / Open data

Health and Care Bill

Proceeding contribution from Jeremy Hunt (Conservative) in the House of Commons on Tuesday, 23 November 2021. It occurred during Debate on bills on Health and Care Bill.

I believe it will. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that issue, because medical training is relevant to the whole United Kingdom, not just one part of it. I hope the amendment will be beneficial to Northern Ireland as well.

If we put ourselves in the shoes of any frontline doctor, nurse or care worker, we would see that they are all completely realistic that this is not a problem that can be solved by next Monday. It takes a long time to train a doctor or nurse. All they have is one simple request: that they can be confident that we are training enough of them for the future, so that even if no immediate solution is in place, there is a long-term solution. That is the purpose of amendment 10. It simply requires the Government to publish every two years independently verified estimates of the number of people we should be training across health and care.

The Government have recognised the pressures on the NHS by giving generous amounts of extra funding. I commend the Government for doing that, but extra money without extra workforce will not solve the problems that we want to solve. At the moment, the NHS just cannot find the staff.

About this proceeding contribution

Reference

704 c221 

Session

2021-22

Chamber / Committee

House of Commons chamber
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