Ministers must back Staff to rebuild our NHS

Andrew George MP told Health Secretary, Wes Streeting MP, that rebuilding staff morale and improving staff retention is critical to rebuilding our NHS. 

His intervention came during a commons debate on the Prof. Lord Darzi Review into the current state of the NHS. The Health Sec. had emphasised: “The NHS may be broken, but NHS staff did not break it.”

Andrew George agreed and advised that rebuilding staff morale will be central to restoring our NHS.

“For over a decade, meaningful workforce planning has been largely absent. Registered nurses are the backbone of our NHS. They deserve to be treated with the utmost respect. Nurse and midwife retention is one of the most pressing challenges the NHS faces. These professionals are highly trained clinicians and must not be confused (as most people do) with healthcare support workers, who also perform an excellent and invaluable job.

Nurses have found themselves powerless as they witness the “normalisation of unsafe and inappropriate care,” as described by the Royal College of Nursing. This issue extends beyond unsafe registered nurse levels in hospital wards; it also includes the 45% reduction in District Nurses and the 32% decline in Health Visitors under the Conservatives.

Andrew George stresses that if the government is serious about “rebuilding our NHS,” it must do so in partnership with the dedicated NHS staff who have been the service’s cornerstone.