A large number of unfilled NHS job vacancies are posing a serious risk to patient safety, a report by MPs says. It found England is now short of 12,000 hospital doctors and more than 50,000 nurses and midwives, calling this the worst workforce crisis in NHS history. It said a reluctance to decisively plug the staffing gap could threaten plans to tackle the Covid treatment backlog. The government said the workforce is growing and NHS England is drawing up long-term plans to recruit more staff.
Former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who chairs the Commons health and social care select committee that produced the report, said tackling the shortage must be a “top priority” for the new prime minister when they take over in September. “Persistent understaffing in the NHS poses a serious risk to staff and patient safety, a situation compounded by the absence of a long-term plan by the government to tackle it,” he said.
The cross-party committee saw evidence that, on current projections, almost a million new jobs will need to be filled in health and social care by the early part of the next decade. Extra staff would be needed to keep up with rising demand as the population gets older and healthcare becomes more complex and technologically advanced.
A ‘national scandal’
The committee also heard evidence from former Health Secretary Sajid Javid, that the government was not on track to deliver its manifesto commitment to increase the number of GPs in England by 6,000.
There was concern about maternity services, with more than 500 midwives leaving the health service between March 2021 and March 2022. The committee described a situation where NHS pensions arrangements meant some senior doctors were better off retiring or reducing their working hours as a “national scandal” and called for swift action to change the rules.
It said conditions were “regrettably worse” in social care, with 95% of care providers struggling to hire staff and 75% finding it difficult to retain existing workers. “Without the creation of meaningful professional development structures, and better contracts with improved pay and training, social care will remain a career of limited attraction, even when it is desperately needed,” the report said. It called for HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) to be more proactive in enforcing the minimum wage, amid concerns that 17,000 care workers were paid below the legal rate of £9.50 an hour.
Miriam Deakin, deputy chief executive of NHS Providers which represents hospitals, mental health trusts and ambulance services, said that many staff were facing “unsustainable” workloads in the face of “ever-growing demand”. “The answer is staring everyone in the face: The government must come up with a fully-funded, long-term workforce plan for the NHS,” she said. Patricia Marquis, England director at the C, said the risk to staff and patients from low staffing levels should “shock ministers into action”.
“On pay the committee was very clear, saying it is unacceptable that some NHS nurses are struggling to feed their families, pay their rent, and travel to work,” she said. Labour’s shadow health secretary Wes Streeting accused the government of having “utterly failed” to address the crisis.
A spokesman for the Department of Health and Social Care said the number of people employed in healthcare was now growing and NHS England had been asked to develop a long-term plan to recruit and retain more staff. “As we continue to deliver on our commitment to recruiting 50,000 more nurses by 2024, we are also running a £95m recruitment drive for maternity services and providing £500m to develop our valued social care workforce,” he said.
