Safe staffing

When I was in Parliament the campaign I was leading to secure mandated safe staffing was making headway. But since the Conservatives governed on their own all that work and progress has been shelved. Instead they’re dumbing-down standards and heaping pressure on staff. This produces just one result. Over-worked staff driven out of the service as Hospitals fail to recruit, even if they had the money to achieve decent staffing levels, which they don’t.

And if, like local Conservative MPs, you believe that merely pronouncing on training places will conjure-up candidates think again. There’s been a massive fall off in applications for nurse and midwifery training, and no wonder. Why would anyone want to pay through the nose for the training and qualifications just to work in an unsafe environment, be poorly paid and so undervalued by this Government?

Of course we should be concerned by CQC inspection report. But it’s this Government and this Health Secretary who should answer for it.