The coalition of over 100 health and care organisations behind the #StrengthInNumbers campaign has issued another briefing urging MPs to support and vote for stronger workforce planning as the Health and Care Bill returns to the House of Commons for another round of ping-pong.
At the end of March 2022, MPs voted to reject an amendment that would have secured independent assessments of how many NHS and social care staff are needed to keep up with demand. The following week, the House of Lords - led by Baroness Cumberlege, with support from Labour, the Liberal Democrats and other cross-party peers including Baroness Harding and Lord Stevens of Birmingham - voted to put a revised version of the amendment back into the bill.
The House of Commons must now decide whether to accept the revised amendment or reject it again.
Amendment 29B in lieu, revised from the last time MPs voted on the Health and Care Bill, seeks to address some of the government’s concerns:
- it requires the Secretary of State to publish a workforce assessment every three years, rather than two;
- revises down the maximum length of projections to 15 years to align with government’s own plans, and;
- removes the requirement for assessments to be independently verified.
Government says it is committed to improving workforce planning and ‘increasing transparency and accountability’. But Clause 35 as originally drafted will not set out how many health and social care staff are needed to meet demand.
The government says it is already taking steps to ensure ‘record numbers of staff working in the NHS’. But record numbers tell us very little about whether we have enough staff to meet demand now or in future.
It also says it has commissioned a ‘long-term strategic framework’. But the framework will not tell us the numbers of staff needed to keep up with demand.
NHS England has also been commissioned to produce a ‘long-term workforce strategy’. But government blocked the inclusion of projected staff numbers in the last NHS workforce strategy. A one-off plan without numbers doesn’t get us very far.
The Minister Ed Argar referred to the ‘challenges of a long term projection’ and the ‘dynamic nature of workforce trends’. But this is why projections are needed: without them, there is no way to assess how changes in workforce trends, such as retirements or working part-time, will impact the delivery of healthcare.
During the last Commons’ debate in March, Minister Ed Argar said amendment 29 was not ‘necessary in its current form’. The coalition of over 100 health and care organisations that make up the #StrengthInNumbers campaign hopes that was a signal that government is open to finding a compromise on this issue.
