Feryal Clark
MP for Enfield North · Labour · United Kingdom
“I thank the Minister for her response. Our world-class bus drivers are the backbone of London’s bus service but have borne the brunt of the extreme heat that the city has been experiencing.”
“I welcome the Secretary of State’s actions to protect children from online harm, especially the harms-based approach she is taking. I have heard evidence from educational digital content creators, whose resources are a lifeline for young people.”
“I welcome the Minister to her place. My constituency was one of the lucky ones that was awarded a banking hub two years ago, and I worked with Cash Access UK to secure a temporary place in the council library. Two years on, it has failed to secure an accessible permanent site and is refusing to engage with me.”
“One of the issues that set Labour apart from other parties is the sheer number of new jobs we are creating in priority areas such as tech, defence and our green industries in constituencies such as mine, Enfield North, as well as across Wales and the rest of the UK.”
“I thank my right hon. Friend for visiting Enfield Wash in my constituency last week. After 14 years of Conservative cuts, Enfield lost around 60% of its funding, hitting vital services such as adult social care, youth services and our high street.”
“Does my hon. Friend agree that the measures are so sweeping that it is not just asylum seekers who are caught by them, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum) mentioned, those who arrived under the ECAA route, also known as the Ankara agreement?”
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“We also know that the UN, EU and the US have launched aid appeals for both Turkey and Syria. As the Minister will know, Turkey has a very large Syrian refugee community, with over 3 million refugees in the area. A large number of them live in the region hit by the earthquake. I am receiving reports from community centres in the region and from members of the community here with loved ones in that region that the treatment of Syrian refugees is heartbreaking. Families are fearful; not speaking Arabic, they fear that they might not receive the help that they so desperately need. Search and rescue support never got to their area, and now they are not receiving the aid that they need to survive in the bitter cold.”
“Feeling totally helpless, I, like so many in my community, could do little more than take to Twitter to raise the alarm and call for help for the relatives of my brother-in-law, who were trapped under their collapsed building. Sadly they died, having waited three days for help which did not reach their neighbourhood. When such devastation occurs, one of the few aspects we can take solace in is the response and acts of others. The international response to the disaster has been immense. I am grateful to the Government for immediately sending over search and rescue teams and a UK emergency medical assessment team, and for £25 million of aid that has been committed to the region. A fund launched by the UK Disasters Emergency Committee raised more than £30 million in its first day.”
“Like many members of our country’s large British Turkish-Kurdish communities, my family woke up that Monday and started trying to contact loved ones and relatives. We were incredibly lucky to find out that the majority of our family were safe, but thousands of families have not been so lucky. I spent the whole day following the earthquake at the local British Alevi community centre. Families were talking to loved ones and watching via WhatsApp video calls while family members tried desperately to dig through the rubble. It was heartrending. Desperation grew as time passed and people waited longer and longer for help to reach them.”
“As we have heard, the series of earthquakes that began in the early hours of Monday 6 February have been devastating. The scale of loss has been immense. Some 46,000 people have been confirmed dead, and the Turkish Government officials have said that that is likely to rise fourfold or fivefold once they have cleared the rubble of collapsed buildings. An estimated 23 million people have been affected, including 7 million children. As a mother, watching a newborn whose whole family had died being pulled out of the rubble, and a father sitting holding the hand of his teenage daughter who lay dead under the ruins of their home, broke my heart. This week when, we thought disaster relief could continue, disaster struck again, with two further powerful earthquakes in the area.”
“My community has some serious questions for the Government, which I hope the Minister will be able to answer. Those who remain in the disaster zone have lost their homes, possessions and family members. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that 5.3 million people have been displaced by the earthquake in Syria alone. The winter weather is making life extremely difficult for survivors.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for her kind words and for her support to the Turkish-speaking community in Hornsey and Wood Green. As I was saying, local community centres across north London and the UK have spent day and night collecting funds and aid to send to Turkey. Local faith groups in Enfield, including Jewish, Sikh, Christian and Muslim groups, came to the centre to show their support and make donations. It has been hugely heart-warming for the Turkish and Kurdish community in this time of crisis. Sadly, the aid that was sent to Alevi faith centres for distribution in Turkey to purchase much-needed tents and goods has been confiscated. The Government have appointed commissioners to these centres and they are unable to distribute the funding, which is really heartbreaking for my community.”
“Will the Minister also commit to looking into the 90-day temporary visa that Germany has put in place for Syrian and Turkish people? Will he let us know what the Government plan to do about that?”
“Q10. I join the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition in their condolences to the victims of the devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria. I reiterate my thanks to the Foreign Secretary for the speed of the UK’s initial response. But as we enter the third day of the earthquake, the bitter cold and unforgiving weather mean that pulling more survivors from the rubble becomes less and less likely, and the immediate humanitarian impact is devastating. When can we expect an announcement on what further aid the Prime Minister’s Government will commit to relief efforts? What discussions is he having with his international counterparts to ensure our response meets the scale of the crisis?”
“T4. It has been two weeks since it was revealed that the Treasury provided special dispensation for a sanctioned Russian warlord to use British lawyers to threaten a British citizen, Eliot Higgins. What has the Chancellor done in that time to get to the bottom of this outrageous scandal of the Treasury undermining sanctions and aiding our enemies to use aggressive lawfare tactics designed to intimidate those exposing the truth?”
“Thousands of British people have been impacted, so what support, if any, will be available to British Kurdish people who are trying to find out about family in Turkey? What can he do?”
“The human toll of this disaster is immense. I thank the Secretary of State for the speedy dispatch of British search and rescue and medical teams. Like many members of the British Kurdish-Turkish community, my family, after waking up and hearing the news yesterday, were trying to find out whether our relatives in Malatya in Turkey were safe. We are very lucky that the majority of our family are safe. I spent the whole day with Turkish-Kurdish members of the community in the local community centre. Hundreds of people were desperately trying to find out if their loved ones are safe. The Foreign Office has provided a helpline, but only for British citizens stuck in this disaster.”
“A nurse stands next to the patient to talk them through it, and holds the patient’s hand. If it is a “slight discomfort”, the whole process of having someone standing there trying to be a guide through it, is worrying. It is the most excruciating thing anyone can go through. It may have been a 10 on the scale. I do not understand how even slightly lower than that could be acceptable for any human being. I was asked things and the nurse kept talking to me, but I could not respond. I was in so much pain. Because I was so desperate for that baby, I would have walked over broken glass with bare feet. I did think about continuing through the pain, but luckily I passed out and the procedure ended. It is not acceptable in this day and age that women have to go through that level of pain for healthcare.”
“It involves dilation of the cervix, sending fluid into the uterus to expand it so clinicians can examine the uterus and the fallopian tubes, and the use of surgical instruments to examine the inside of a woman. It is an essential tool for diagnosis and treatment of many conditions affecting women, including unusual bleeding, pelvic pain, recurrent miscarriages, difficulty getting pregnant and many more. When I had my hysteroscopy, I had had several miscarriages and I was desperate for a baby. When I was offered this procedure for further investigation, I read every side of the leaflet and looked into it. Not only did I take paracetamol; I took ibuprofen, to ensure that I did not have the “little discomfort”. I turned up and there was a lovely nurse, who was very softly spoken.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Mark. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Ms Brown) for securing this debate, and for her tireless campaign on the matter. It has been 10 years with almost 10 debates, and she is still going. Numerous Ministers have committed to making this a priority. As we have heard, there have been some improvements, but nowhere near enough to make a difference to the lives of women. I praise the incredible contributions from the hon. Members for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon), and my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell). As we have heard, a hysteroscopy is a procedure used to examine the inside of the uterus.”
“How many women will continue to have the procedure in pain, or not at all, as a result of it not being considered a priority? Will the Minister explain to us, and to all those women who face having the treatment, why it is not considered a priority? Finally, painful hysteroscopies are just another iteration of no care being given to women and their health. Yet again, women have been given empty promises of improved care. How many more stories must we hear about women in unnecessary pain? How many more times must we hear that women are not listened to in healthcare settings? And how much longer must women wait for the healthcare they so desperately need?”
“Will the Minister tell us what she is doing to ensure that the new clinical guidance will be in place as soon as possible, for all clinicians to use? We must ensure all women have access to the pain management they are entitled to. How is that being monitored, because it does not seem to be happening currently? Improvements in hysteroscopy care are included in the women’s health strategy, which was published late last year, as the hon. Member for Thurrock mentioned. The Minister is responsible for the women’s health strategy, and it is her ambition that women and girls report better experiences of procedures, such as this one. However, the Minister’s letter, setting out her year 1 priorities, which she sent around last week, did not mention hysteroscopies.”
“While some women are left in excruciating pain, some women hear those stories and decide not to have the procedure—I am not sure which is worse. No woman should feel discouraged from attended a hysteroscopy appointment for fear that they could experience pain, because, as mentioned earlier, hysteroscopies are an essential tool in diagnosis and treatment of women’s health. The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists’ guidance states that all pain relief options should be discussed with women. I welcome that those guidelines are being updated, but the clinical guidance currently in use is over 10 years old. Today is not the first time Ministers have been made aware of the seriousness of the issue for women, so why did the Government not ask for the guidance to be updated sooner?”
“As we have heard, the national tariff creates an incentive for hysteroscopies to be carried out as an out-patient. We cannot deny the obvious advantages of out-patient care. For example, it allowed women to access hysteroscopies more easily during covid, and can reduce the time women have to wait for diagnosis and treatment, but it does not allow for patient choice and patient voice. Some 61 out of 131 NHS trusts admitted to the Campaign Against Painful Hysteroscopy that they did not warn patients about the risk of severe pain, and this could lead to unnecessary pain for women. Informed consent, choice and effective communication is not the norm when it comes to women’s health; it is barely there. That cannot and must not continue.”
“It is astonishing that the NHS still does not collect data on the number of women who experience severe pain during hysteroscopy. However, the Campaign Against Painful Hysteroscopy, which does undertake surveys of women, has found that more than 90% of women surveyed were traumatised for a day or longer by the pain. Three quarters said they were not aware of pain management options before the procedure was carried out. In 2020, half of NHS hospital trusts in England failed to warn patients that they could suffer pain. Women are simply not given the information they need to make informed decisions, which must include information on potential pain, options for pain management and alternative procedures. Let us be clear: a woman should not have to experience excruciating levels of pain to access essential healthcare.”
“I wholeheartedly agree with the hon. Member. It develops a level of acceptance, which is not right or acceptable. Hysteroscopies are paramount to women’s health, but we have heard horrific accounts from my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham of women’s experiences of having the procedure. That should never have happened to women, and those women affected are right in their fight for justice. There is a lack of information or no information about the choice of pain relief available before, during or after the procedure. Paracetamol is not enough. There is an assumption that the patient will experience only discomfort—in my case, it was slightly more than that—despite some women experiencing intolerable pain. If they do experience that so-called discomfort, the assumption is that it does not matter because it is only short lived.”
“I refer the House to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. As a proud member of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, I have been lucky enough to visit some of our fellow NATO Parliamentary Assembly members, such as the US and Spain, which take huge pride in their buoyant shipbuilding sectors. The Secretary of State talks about the ships being put together in this country. With contracts being awarded outside the UK, or a large portion of them being completed abroad, how does he expect to keep investment in the UK—”
“The women’s health strategy was an opportunity to fundamentally change the inequalities women face. Women were promised a clinical women’s health lead in the NHS, yet a former Health Minister, the hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson), admitted that there has not even been a discussion about establishing the role. Women in east Kent were promised change after the damning review of local maternity services, yet the Care Quality Commission is now threatening the trust there with enforcement action. Time after time, women’s voices are at best being ignored and at worst being silenced. So I ask the Minister: when will this Government stop letting women down with empty promises? Is the women’s health strategy worth the paper it was written on?”
“That is despite the NHS Herefordshire and Worcestershire integrated care board spending over £70 million a year on locum and agency staff because it does not have enough doctors. Thousands of straight-A students are being turned away from studying medicine and the Government have no long-term answer or solution. Members will not be surprised to hear that Labour does have a plan for the NHS—the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire referred to it. Labour will double the number of medical school places from 7,500 to 15,000, train 10,000 extra nurses and midwives every year, double the number of district nurses qualifying each year and create 5,000 more health visitors. That will be paid for by abolishing non-dom tax status, because patients need treatment more than the wealthiest need the tax break.”
“However, I worry that the Government are being short-sighted and are unwilling to provide those places. It was only recently that they finally heeded their own Chancellor’s calls to assess workforce needs. The Government are missing open goals. This weekend, we heard that the Three Counties Medical School at the University of Worcester, a new school set up to boost the number of doctors in England, has been told that it will not receive funding for domestic students. This sounds mad but, during a massive crisis in the number of doctors, the Department of Health and Social Care is maintaining its cap on the number of university medical school places that it funds. The University of Worcester says that, next year, it will have to recruit only international students, who are less likely to stay and work locally.”
“We have 7.2 million people waiting to start planned NHS treatment; the Minister will want to know that that is nearly triple the number in 2010, when Labour left power. As we have heard, there are over 133,000 NHS vacancies, 10,000 of which are for doctors. There are simply too few doctors to meet demand. The latest Royal College of Physicians census found that 52% of advertised consultant physician posts went unfilled in 2021, the highest rate since records began. I am therefore really pleased that we are discussing this issue today. We cannot build a healthy economy without a healthy society, and we cannot have a healthy society without training more doctors. The chief executive of the NHS, Amanda Pritchard, said recently that more medical school places are needed.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Sir George. I thank the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Anthony Browne) for bringing this important debate to Westminster Hall, and I praise the contributions of all Members, which covered the whole host of issues affecting the NHS workforce. We have heard throughout the debate that we must train more doctors, yet this summer the Government cut medical school places by 30%, turning away thousands more straight-A students from training to become doctors when we need them more than ever, with the NHS in the midst of a chronic workforce crisis and people finding it impossible to get a GP appointment or an operation when they need one.”
“More than three quarters of respondents to a December 2022 survey of Royal College of Physicians members said that they were very or somewhat stressed at work, with clinical workload and staff vacancies in teams being the leading factors. The 2021 NHS staff survey found that 31% said they often thought about leaving. The Royal College of General Practitioners 2022 GP survey found that 42% of GPs say that they are planning to quit the profession in the next five years. I would be grateful if the Minister considered job satisfaction, and therefore retention of current staff, and set out what the Government are doing about that. Existing doctors need support and additional training so as not to get burned out and to stay in the role, and training of new and current staff cannot come soon enough. Patients and NHS staff cannot afford to wait.”
“I do not have much time, so I am going to continue. The Government could have adopted Labour’s policy, which the Chancellor himself said that he agrees with. In an email to supporters of the patient safety charity that he founded, he wrote: “The medical school place increase is something I very much hope the government adopts on the basis that smart governments always nick the best ideas of their opponents.” I would be grateful if the Minister set out why his party has decided not to listen to its own Chancellor. Let me turn to retention. We need to train additional doctors—we have heard no opposition to that in today’s debate—but we must also focus on keeping the doctors that we already have.”
“Napo has said that the insufficient capacity to hold prisoners is directly linked to staffing and workload crises in probation, as my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) said. Does the Minister agree with Napo’s view that there is a workload crisis in probation services? If so, who caused it?”
“The Minister talks about engagement, so can she please confirm why the Home Office is now refusing to hold reconciliation events despite having promised to do so?”
“The payment-by-results incentives used by the last Labour Government made a significant impact on elective waiting lists. However, they are not appropriate in every case, and options must be carefully considered. Hon. Members will know that elective waiting lists are now at record levels. Given the reports of Ministers wanting to bring back the payment-by-results incentives in some form, I would be keen to hear from this Minister what plans they have to do that. Getting these changes right through effective consultation is in the interests of everyone and, crucially, will ensure better outcomes for patients. I look forward to hearing from the Minister how the Government intend to deliver that.”
“We have seen during the pandemic what happens when the NHS strays from those principles, and we cannot allow such events to happen again. The former tariff system, which the regulations form part of replacing, sought to deliver a more competitive environment to drive up quality and improve outcomes for patients, yet too often it was a rigid system that did not allow for the flexibility that individual commissioners needed. Giving local decision makers the tools that they need to improve services in their areas is vital to ensuring that the NHS meets the needs of patients where they are, not where the system thinks they should be. It is because of that that a rigorous and effective consultation on changes is so important. Done properly, payment schemes can deliver a meaningful impact on patient outcomes.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham. Ensuring that patients get the best quality care is in the interests of everyone, and the Labour party will always support measures that seek to achieve that. Although we have some reservations, we will not oppose the regulations today. The proposed consultation is important because the NHS payment scheme will govern how billions of pounds of taxpayer money is spent. Quality of care and value for money should always be at the core of our health service’s decision making. They are not alternative options or binary choices. They are both critical to the future of our NHS, so we need financial management in the health service to be able to deliver both in parallel. Given the urgency of the crisis affecting the NHS, action to deliver that must come at pace.”
“It is now well over three years since the Conservatives promised the end of no-fault evictions. Enfield has the highest rate of section 21 evictions in London. Thirty families in my constituency in the past month alone were made homeless as a result of section 21. I have families sitting in my office trying to keep warm as we try to find them emergency accommodation. Will the Prime Minister scrap this shameful legislation, and if so, when?”
“That will be paid for by abolishing the immoral non-dom tax status. I encourage the Minister to nick Labour’s idea and commit to implementing that workforce strategy as soon as possible. Unless we solve the systemic workforce shortages, we will not be able to robustly tackle conditions such as aortic dissection. In conclusion, I want to see a future where aortic dissection is diagnosed quickly, treated rapidly, and receives appropriate long-term care and management.”
“Will the Minister therefore clarify what steps she is taking to support those exciting and potentially life-saving diagnostic tools? Finally, let me touch on the workforce. We know that the NHS has the facilities to treat those suffering from aortic dissection. The problem lies in diagnostics. The reality, however, is that system-wide pressure on the NHS exacerbates misdiagnosis and compounds issues in patient pathways. It is therefore essential that targeted aortic dissection strategies come alongside whole-system workforce overhaul. The next Labour Government will oversee the biggest expansion of the NHS workforce in history, doubling the number of medical school places, training 15,000 new doctors, creating 10,000 new nursing placements, and recruiting 5,000 new health visitors.”
“Genetic screening, functional imaging and biomarker analysis are now possible, and if used efficiently, they enable clinicians to provide treatment before an aortic dissection occurs. As the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire highlighted, once a patient is identified as having a family history of the disease, there is scope for potentially life-saving genetic screening. The ADCT estimates that 20% to 30% of families with dissections have an identified gene. Work is ongoing to identify the remaining 70% to 80% of genetic causes, but if we can screen that 20% to 30%, potentially thousands of lives could be saved over the next few years. I am sure that both sides of the House will agree that that is a worthy endeavour.”
“The ADCT states: “The current pathways are ineffective… There are problems transferring images… Medical management, blood pressure control, imaging protocols, investigation of genetics…and long-term follow-ups are all sporadic and often not addressed well.” The AAD toolkit has made a positive difference to some of those problems, but there is still much work to do. Has the Minister met with ADCT recently to review pathway processes? In addition, what work is taking place to eliminate regional variations in aortic dissection care, and to streamline aortic care so that patients can be seen before it is too late? I also wish to highlight preventive interventions and why it is important that the Government support diagnostics to enable clinicians to save lives.”
“It is therefore crucial that we do everything we can to drive up diagnosis rates. The Aortic Dissection Charitable Trust estimates that one in three of those who have aortic dissection are misdiagnosed. I would be grateful, then, if the Minister will update colleagues on the steps her Department is taking to improve diagnosis rates for aortic dissection. The ADCT has made the case for a review of A&E triage processes, imaging, diagnosis and transfer for surgery. Notably, it also advocates diagnosis being made pre-hospital, which bypasses emergency departments and saves vital time. That work already happens with acute coronary syndrome and acute heart attacks.”
“Type A is far more dangerous; if untreated, it is sadly almost always fatal. We have also heard today that over 2,000 people per year lose their lives from aortic dissection. Some 11% of maternal deaths from cardiovascular causes are due to aortic dissections. Worryingly, the Oxford Vascular Study projects that those figures will almost double by 2050. It is crucial, then, that we engage with experts and give this life-threatening condition the attention that it deserves. As the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire said, there have been some positive advances in aortic dissection care over the last year—notably, the launch of the acute aortic dissection toolkit—but we cannot afford to take our foot off the pedal. Deaths from aortic dissection are avoidable, and with timely treatment the survival rate is good, as we have heard.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Pritchard. I want to take a moment to sincerely thank the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire (Mrs Latham) for securing this debate and for sharing her very personal story. I offer my profound condolences to her for the loss of her son, Ben, and I recognise her extraordinarily brave work in campaigning to improve the patient pathway for aortic dissection, and to increase research and screening. As we have heard, aortic dissection occurs because of a partial tear in the wall of the aorta. The tear then spreads, and can rupture or interrupt the blood supply to vital organs. There are two distinct types of aortic dissection: type A, which occurs in the front of the chest, and type B, which occurs in the back of the chest.”
“It includes creating 10,000 new nursing and midwifery placements every year, training 5,000 new health visitors, doubling the number of district nurses qualifying every year and doubling the number of medical school places, so that we have the doctors we need in our NHS. Labour will also produce a long-term workforce plan for the NHS for the next five, 10 and 15 years, which will ensure that we do not find ourselves in this position again. Although I welcome the measures outlined by the Minister, the Government must acknowledge the scale of the crisis and rise to the challenge.”
“In midwifery, there are 800 fewer midwives than following the 2019 general election. I will give the Government some credit: they have heeded the calls of their own Chancellor to assess, finally, the NHS workforce needs. Words will not be enough, however. Encouraging the recruitment of international healthcare professionals has serious ethical implications. It risks worsening the lack of healthcare workers in other countries that are dealing with shortages of their own, and it is no substitute for training home-grown talent. That is why Labour has pledged the biggest expansion of medical school places in history, which will give the NHS the doctors it needs, and will be paid for by abolishing non-dom tax status.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I welcome the measures regarding the registration of international dentists, dental care professionals, nurses, nursing associates and midwives. When we have 132,000 vacancies in the NHS, I am not here to stand in the way of cutting unnecessary red tape. However, let us not pretend that this is a long-term solution, or even a sticking plaster, when it comes to the problems that the NHS is facing. The number of NHS dental practices had fallen by more than l,200 in the five years before the pandemic. Dental staff are leaving the profession: 2,000 dentists quit the NHS in 2021 alone. In nursing, there are 46,828 empty nursing posts across hospitals, mental health, community care and other services. That means one in 10 nursing roles are unfilled across the service overall.”
“Members on both sides of the House will have been shocked and appalled by the recent deaths of children from streptococcus A, and our thoughts are with all the families affected. Cases are on the rise, and as we head into winter it is vital for parents to be able to secure for their children the care that they so desperately need. The shortage of GPs means that too many are struggling to see a doctor, and now there are reports of shortages of antibiotics as well. What advice can the Secretary of State give parents whose children are exhibiting symptoms but who cannot obtain a GP appointment, and what assurances can he give on the supply and availability of antibiotics?”
“Recently, a Premier Inn hotel in my constituency threw out one of their visually impaired guests, Ms Angharad Paget-Jones, and her guide dog Tudor in the middle of the night because they refused to believe, despite being shown identification, that Tudor was a guide dog. Can the Minister tell me what action his Department is taking not only to ensure that businesses are complying with the Equality Act 2010, but to go after those who show frank disregard for it in practice?”
“The Minister has previously said that he was left speechless by the safety problems at Manston. He also said on 27 October: “We want to ensure that the site is maintained legally”. —[ Official Report , 27 October 2022; Vol. 721, c. 403.] In response to my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), he said, “we are broadly there”. What does “broadly there” mean? Is the site maintained legally or not?”
“We are short of 12,000 hospital doctors, yet this summer, medical school places were cut by 30%, turning away thousands of straight-A students from training to become doctors when we need them more than ever. As we have heard again and again this afternoon, the consistent failure to train and retain the nurses and doctors our NHS needs has left staff overworked, overstretched and struggling to cope.”
“However, the reality is that patients are finding it impossible to get a GP appointment due to chronic shortages of doctors, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mrs Hamilton). Stroke and heart attack victims are waiting an hour for an ambulance, and over 400,000 patients have been waiting more than a year for an operation. We have gone from an NHS that treated people well and on time to not just a winter crisis, but a year-round crisis, and an NHS that is understaffed and unable to deliver timely care. The NHS is facing the greatest workforce crisis in its history. Right now, there are 132,000 vacancies across the NHS, and 165,000 in social care. We are short of 40,000 nurses, and we are losing midwives faster than we can recruit them.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood) for securing this important debate, and praise all the Members who have spoken this afternoon for their brilliant contributions. The NHS is a cornerstone of communities up and down our country. It is the biggest employer in Europe and one of the biggest in the world, supporting the livelihoods of millions of British families. A publicly funded healthcare service that is free at the point of need is a lifeline for so many, and the people of this country are overwhelmingly proud of it. The pride and respect we have for the NHS means that it will always have people to stand up and defend it when things are going wrong.”