I beg to move,
That this House has considered the Third Report of the Health and Social Care Committee, Workforce: recruitment, training and retention in health and social care, HC 115, published on 25 July 2022, and the Government response, HC 1289, published on 24 April 2023.
Today’s debate could not come at a more timely moment, although when I wrote that line, I did not realise that it would be at an even more timely moment, given the news that we had this lunchtime about the Government accepting the pay review bodies’ recommendations across the public sector. As I said earlier in the House, I welcome that very much and think it is a fair and proportionate response on behalf of the whole economy and all taxpayers. The Government, of course, have to see things in the round. I hope that all unions in the health space will show the same response that we have seen initially from the main teaching unions. I urge them to do that.
Last week we marked the 75th anniversary of the NHS, and the week before that the Government published the much anticipated “NHS Long Term Workforce Plan”. It was very much welcomed. Some 46 organisations posted messages of support for it, so I think it landed well. In the context of the last fortnight, this is therefore a good moment to look back at what the Health and Social Care Committee, which I chair, recommended in our major report last year on workforce issues, and to look forward to see how many of those recommendations have been taken up in the new workforce plan, and what remains to be done.
This follows hot on the heels of our topical evidence session yesterday, where we heard some initial views about the plan from stakeholders; we put some of the already emerging questions to them and to the medical director of NHS England, Professor Stephen Powis. We are particularly grateful to the former doctor and author Adam Kay for coming and speaking to us, and to Alex Whitfield, chief executive of Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the Royal Hampshire County Hospital in my constituency. I thank them for coming in. The Committee’s workforce report was published nearly 12 months ago, at the end of July 2022. It was the result of a wide-ranging and in-depth inquiry looking at workforce issues, including recruitment, training and retention across the health and social care sectors. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Surrey (Jeremy Hunt), the current Chancellor of the Exchequer, for his work then chairing the Committee and since.
As ever, we are as one, and I endorse every one of our report’s findings. That is because it was the result of more than 150 written submissions and an extensive range of oral evidence witnesses from across the health and care sector, who put together the report. Its main conclusions were stark. The report found that the NHS and social care sector is facing the greatest workforce crisis in its history. It noted that, in September 2021, the NHS was advertising just over 99,000 vacant posts and for social care the figure was 105,000.