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Labor has a plan to tackle what could be the worst crisis in NHS history, the shadow health secretary has said during a visit to Swindon.
Wes Streeting, MP for Ilford North since 2015, said scrapping ‘non-domiciled’ tax status – where people living in Britain can say it’s not their permanent home and pay tax elsewhere – will allow a Labor government to pay for a huge influx of personnel.
He was speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service just before a campaign meeting with local Labor activists during a visit to Swindon.
Mr Streeting, who had visited Great Western Hospital with South Swindon Labor candidate Heidi Alexander, said: ‘Despite the pressure and the upcoming winter which could be an NHS emergency, I have been impressed with some of the very good work being done. at GWH, it’s prenatal care and injury prevention for premature babies.
But Mr Streeting acknowledged the unprecedented pressures on the hospital and the NHS in general. He said: “The challenge is that there are not enough staff.
“We have a fully costed plan to address this and it will allow us to increase the number of nurses and midwives by 10,000 each year, fund an additional 5,000 medical visitors and double the number of nurses by district.
“By removing non-dom status and making the people who live here pay their taxes, which we believe is fair, we will be able to fund the biggest expansion of its workforce in the history of the NHS.”
He added that current Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, who was chairman of the Commons Health and Social Care Committee until the summer, had previously called for a plan for a significant increase in the NHS workforce and said : “My challenge for him is to do what we suggest.
He also said the lack of social care places available for people who needed them when they left hospital was having a huge impact on the NHS – finding a solution would help free up thousands of hospital beds.
“We need to look at council funding and councils like Swindon have borne the brunt of central government cuts for years under the guise of devolution.
“I would also challenge NHS leaders to spend some of their money on social care. But the government allocated half a billion pounds of extra funding for social care which never left the Department of Health due to the political chaos this summer and autumn with new chancellors and new prime ministers.
But Mr Streeting was unwilling to commit a new government to repay the debts incurred for the construction of the new Great Western Hospital in 2003 under the Private Finance Initiative. In 2017, GWH bosses said they were paying £12.5million a year under the contract which runs until 2029.
Mr Streeting said: ‘There is no doubt that hospital finances are a serious problem: the good news for GWH is that these payments will end in the next few years, but there are other hospital trusts with the same problem. .
“It’s something we would consider, but I’m not prepared to make any promises we can’t keep.
“The Prime Minister is now saying he will not deliver on promises made in the 2019 election, which were in the manifesto or even that he made just six or seven weeks ago. I say if we promise something, it will be something we do.
“I want people to know that Labor is the cavalry when it comes to the NHS and we have a fully costed plan to save it.”
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