NHS: Number of Medically Qualified Staff (Hansard, 13 May 1991)

§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Baroness Hooper)
My Lords, we do not expect reductions in the overall number of doctors in National Health Service hospitals. The Government are committed to a supply of doctors which is adequate to meet demand.

§ Lord Molloy
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for that reply. However, the Question was not intended to relate to doctors alone, although strictly speaking, as the noble Baroness said, medical staff means doctors. However, doctors would not get very far without nurses, scientists and paramedics. Will there be no reduction in the numbers of people who assist doctors? Is she also aware that it is now 10 years since the Black Committee reported that poverty is the biggest enemy of good health in this country? Is she further aware that with unemployment, homelessness and lack of housing on the increase, poverty will increase and therefore ill health will increase? Will the question of dealing with poverty, which creates ill health, be taken into account in considering the future of the health service?

§ Baroness Hooper
My Lords, in the first place the Government are directing all their policies to ensuring that poverty does not increase. However, in saying that I recognise the need for co-ordination in government policy. I point to community care and the preventive health approach, both of which take account of the various factors involved, as the way forward. Perhaps I may also take the opportunity to say again for the record that we currently have more doctors than ever before and more nurses than ever before and that more patients are being treated than ever before.

§ Lord Mellish
My Lords, since we are talking numbers, can the noble Baroness say how many medically qualified staff we have now compared with 10 years ago?

§ Baroness Hooper
My Lords, if in speaking of medically qualified staff the noble Lord means doctors, which is the recognised interpretation of the phrase, in the United Kingdom the number of doctors working in the NHS has risen from 76,442 in 1979 to 89,475 in 1989, an increase of 17 per cent.

§ Lord Nugent of Guildford
My Lords, is my noble friend aware that the National Health Service's record regarding staff increases over the past 10 years goes even further than she has just told us and we have had an additional 8,000 nurses, 15,000 dentists and 5,000 hospital doctors over the past 10 years? That is not a bad record.

§ Lord Ennals
My Lords—

Noble Lords
The answer!

§ Baroness Hooper
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for providing additional figures. He said 8,000 nurses. The figure is more like 80,000 nurses.

§ Lord Ennals
My Lords, I am so sorry to have interrupted the noble Baroness. Is not the Question about the future? What is the Minister's view of the report of the Universities Funding Council of 8th May that the situation in the main teaching hospitals, particularly in London, is now: sufficiently serious as to raise doubts about their future ability to deliver a viable educational programme unless urgent corrective action is taken"; and that if the teaching hospitals fail to attract enough work not only will hundreds of jobs be in peril but the training of doctors will also be jeopardised? Does she consider that a party political statement, as the BMA's is alleged to be, or does she think that there is some truth in it?

§ Baroness Hooper
My Lords, we obviously need the co-operation of the medical profession in all of this. As regards Achieving a Balance, that represents the agreed policy on manpower planning between the National Health Service, the joint consultants committee and the Government. So far as concerns medical school intake and teaching, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State has recently announced that a new committee will be set up to examine overall requirements for numbers of medical staff.

§ Lord Ennals
My Lords, will the Minister say what the Government's reaction is to the report published last week?

§ Baroness Hooper
No, my Lords.

§ Lord Molloy
My Lords, will the Minister be good enough to check with Guy's and Lewisham, where the hospital trust has recently announced a cut of 10 per cent. in all grades, despite other figures that we have been given? Will she also check with Charing Cross and Westminster hospitals, which have issued a statement that more than 435 jobs will be lost, including doctors, consultants, technicians, paramedics and scientists? That seems to conflict with what the Minister has said. Ought these matters not to be examined? Above all, should we not ensure that those powerful and well-equipped hospitals are easily accessible to those who for another term face the possibility of being poverty stricken?

§ Baroness Hooper
My Lords, all of the trusts which have announced any programme of reductions have made it clear that the reductions in staff will be made at all levels and wherever possible by natural wastage. 1353 So far as concerns the teaching hospitals, it must be the case that patients should not have to move to hospitals for the convenience of those who are learning to become doctors. It must be for the doctors to move where the patients are. If that means out of central London then that is what it means.

§ Lord Molloy
My Lords, this is a terribly important matter. The BMA complained about the fact that people are being sent to hospitals where there is nowhere to put them except in the corridors. They cannot even send them back home. It is a serious question for both the Government and the department. Can these matters at least be looked at?

§ Baroness Hooper
My Lords, the reason for our comprehensive set of reforms, which has just been introduced, is to make the National Health Service more efficient.