29 Oct GOVERNMENT HAS NO PLAN TO IMPROVE PRODUCTIVITY IN THE NHS, SAYS MEL STRIDE
THE Government is pouring more money into the NHS without any plan for improving productivity, Shadow Pensions Secretary Mel Stride has said.
He told GB News: “We know that there’s a lot of pressure on the NHS and of course Covid in substantial form caused a lot of that. Where we can support the government getting waiting lists down, of course, we will do so.
“I think the concern about the latest announcement is it sounds like just much more money going into the NHS, but without alongside it a clear plan for improving productivity.
“Because what we know with the NHS is we’ve got more money going to the NHS than at any time in its history. We’ve got more staff, more doctors and more nurses, and yet the output is not where it should be.
“Now we had a very clear productivity plan under the last Budget, £3.4 billion going into that, and we’ve heard nothing from Labour on productivity in the NHS at all other than that they’re going to go out and consult the public.
“Given they’ve been in opposition for 14 years, that’s just not good enough.
“I think everybody agrees, right across the political spectrum, the vital role that the NHS plays in all our lives. It does an extraordinary job, and it is absolutely vital to a civilised society that we have that care there right at the heart of our society.
“But nonetheless, we have to be realistic if we are going to have an NHS that is going to cope with an ever-ageing population, for example, greater expectations on the NHS in terms of more expensive cures and drugs and treatments and so on…
“Because unless you can get productivity up, and it’s actually declined in the NHS since Covid, unless you can get it up, you’re not going to get through those backlogs.
“That’s the missing part of what the government has announced this morning. There is no plan for improving productivity and that needs to be brought forward. We had one, and they don’t.”
He added: “What you need is a plan. You need a clear, as we had, a long-term workforce plan. You need a clear productivity plan. It then needs to be properly funded.
“If you have that plan, then you can start to squeeze out these inefficiencies, reorganise, invest in the areas you need to invest to get productivity and output up in the National Health Service, so it can do more of that compassionate thing of helping people up and down the country.
“But without that plan, I’m afraid it’s going to be the same old, same old.”
