Shake-up in NHS ‘could pay for 6,000 nurses’

Ed Miliband will today attempt to ramp up pressure on the Government to drop its controversial Health Bill during a visit to the Princess Royal University Hospital in Kent. He has claimed there are “just three months to save the NHS from the reforms”.

The Doncaster North MP said that more than 3,500 nurses had been lost since the Government came to power and another 2,500 were threatened, according to Royal College of Nursing (RCN) estimates.

Mr Miliband said the Government was planning to spend £1.7 billion bringing in the Health and Social Care Bill, while covering 6,000 full-time equivalent nursing posts for three years would cost £748m.

The Government proposals create a raft of changes including GP-led commissioning of healthcare and allowing most NHS trusts to make up to 49 per cent of their work private.

Mr Miliband said: “In tough times and with little money around, the very first priority should be to protect the front line NHS. Instead we have a Government blowing a vast amount of money on a damaging top-down reorganisation at the same time as it is cutting thousands of nurses, with more than 3,000 already gone.

“Labour’s priority is protecting the front line, not a pointless and damaging reorganisation of the NHS.”

Mr Miliband said the shake-up would open the health service to a “free market free-for-all” that would put the principles of the NHS at risk and insisted the Government could still drop the plan.

He said: “Words like co-operation and integration have been inserted into the legislation, but the Government has not backed down from the original concept.

“The reality is that this still represents a dangerous leap in the dark, putting the principles of the NHS at risk. People at the heart of the NHS, staff and patients, would breathe a sigh of relief if the Bill was dropped.

“At the last election, David Cameron cited his commitment to the NHS to show he was a different type of Conservative. And he promised no more top-down reorganisations.

“But all he has done is betray his promises and let people down.

“It is not too late to stop this Bill. We have three months to prevent great harm being done to the NHS. Now is the time for people of all parties and of none, the professions, the patients and now peers in the House of Lords to work together to try to stop this Bill.”

Last week, the Royal College of GPs (RCGP) and the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy were among those calling for the Bill to be scrapped completely.

The unions the British Medical Association (BMA), the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) and the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) have also said they oppose the Bill and said it must be withdrawn.

The RCGP said it could no longer work with the Government on the Bill because its concerns over competition and bureaucracy had not been addressed.

RCGP chairman Dr Clare Gerada said: “We cannot sit back. Instead, we must once again raise our concerns in the hope that the Prime Minister will halt this damaging, unnecessary and expensive reorganisation which, in our view, risks leaving the poorest and most vulnerable in society to bear the brunt.

“Patients will find their care will be fragmented, it will be on different sites, it won’t join up, it will be difficult to hand over care and it will be phenomenally expensive to keep track of all these competing parts of the NHS.”

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