NHS set to be given money to hire extra doctors and nurses this summer after repeated delays
Plans to spend billions of pounds boosting the number of doctors and nurses working in England are expected to be announced to mark the 75th anniversary of the NHS, i understands.
Jeremy Hunt has promised to commit the funding needed to ramp up staff training for the health service, but is also demanding reforms to ensure that the money is spent as efficiently as possible.
The launch of the NHS workforce plan has been repeatedly delayed: it was first pledged in 2018, and last autumn the Chancellor said it would be published in the coming months.
Proposals to announce the details at the spring Budget were scrapped after they were not signed off in time, and a plan to publish this week also fell through at the last minute.
Sources in No 10 and the Treasury said the full details had not yet been finalised with Mr Hunt and Rishi Sunak keen to make as big an impact as possible with the announcement.
A health source said the NHS 75th anniversary in early July had been earmarked as the next possible date for the plan to be published.
Steve Barclay, the Health Secretary, told Sky News: “The Chancellor committed to the long-term workforce plan in the autumn statement. It is a big complex set of proposals, it is right that we take our time to get the detail of that right and we will bring that out.”
He confirmed it would include significant new funding, saying: “Any expansion of domestic workforce will come at a cost. There’s a cost in terms of the training itself, there’s a cost from higher numbers in terms of the pay for those roles as well but it is also about looking at what reforms we can have as part of that plan but of course, these are discussions that we have on a cross-government basis and that will be part of the announcement.”
The Government is set to announce a roll-out of apprenticeships to more NHS roles, to ensure that young people can become nurses and even doctors without having to go to university.
The centrepiece of the plan will be a major increase in the number of training places available at medical schools, which are currently subject to tight controls on how many students they can accept.
Labour’s shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, Jonathan Ashworth, called on Mr Barclay to borrow the Opposition’s plans. He told the BBC: “One of the big issues in the NHS, one of the reasons why we’ve got seven million people on a waiting list – many people waiting beyond a year for treatment… one of the reasons why people are waiting so long for treatment is because we simply don’t have enough staff in the NHS which is why Keir Starmer and Wes Streeting have outlined a really detailed plan to recruit the nurses, the midwives, the paramedics, the doctors that we need in our NHS now. And I just wish that Steve Barclay would adopt it.”
Last week, the Department for Health announced that it would spend £20bn on constructing 40 new hospital buildings. The funding, which was promised by Mr Hunt in principle but will not be formally committed until after the next election, enabled Mr Barclay to keep the controversial hospitals programme alive after repeated questions over its future.
