Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 17 November 2021
Presiding Officer,
“We need a recruitment and retention strategy with real teeth because it is evident the one in place by Labour ministers is totally ineffective and is putting our NHS at breaking point.”
That was said by a Conservative member of the Senedd in Wales. I do not believe the statement, and nor is it true of the NHS in Scotland. I could also make a point about the vacancy rate for nurses and midwives in Scotland, which is 7.1 per cent. That is not good enough and it is a significant issue, but the rate is 10.3 per cent in England. That is not to remotely pass the buck in relation to the significant and major issues in Scotland, but they should be placed in context.
I agree with many of the matters that Jackie Baillie raised. I absolutely agree that pressures on staffing existed before the pandemic, but that was not just in Scotland but across the UK. That can be true at the same time as we have record levels of investment in the NHS by the Scottish Government and record staffing numbers, with numbers up by 21 per cent over the SNP’s time in office. Action was being taken to tackle the pressures prior to the pandemic, with the expansion of medical, nursing and midwifery training places, as well as an increase in levels of postgraduate specialist medical training.
As part of the NHS recovery plan, there is a commitment to grow the number of undergraduate medical training places by 100 per annum over this session of the Parliament, as well as an ambitious plan to double the numbers of people training from the poorest backgrounds.
That puts into perspective the calls from the Conservatives to remove the cap on funded training places. Action has already been taken—the action of a costed plan to increase those places. However, I would welcome additional information from the Scottish Government on the creation of a national centre for workforce supply and what its relationship will be with more general workforce planning—there surely must be a connection—including in ensuring a sufficient supply of places at medical schools and across other disciplines. Those things have to talk to each other, because that is important.
By the end of this year, the Scottish Government will publish a national workforce strategy that supports the delivery of its Covid recovery plan with more details and key workforce targets. Will the national centre for workforce supply feed continuously into any revisions of those targets? Will the strategy have specific targets on recruitment and retention that we can monitor? Will it feed into the assumptions on training places over the years? It is right that all that should be scrutinised.
I return to Jackie Baillie’s amendment, which references various important matters other than training places, such as recruitment and retention of staff across the NHS, as well as the idea of targeting potential NHS returners. I agree with that absolutely. I contend that much of that work is already happening but it is right that we do more where we can and monitor its success.
I wanted to say more but, in the time that I have left, I will talk about people who are already qualified to work in our NHS. I refer to people such as the nurses whom I met at an event in the Parliament a few weeks ago who were trained in Scotland but are not allowed to work in the NHS because of their asylum status. That is scandalous, against their human rights and an act of self-harm against Scotland and its NHS. Someone who is about to graduate in another medical discipline—they are not a medic and I do not want to mention their discipline—contacted me the other day to say that, because of their asylum status, they will not be able to take up paid employment in the NHS.
There are things that we can do in the Parliament to improve the situation, but surely to goodness there are also things that we can do in the UK to allow everyone who is qualified to work in our NHS to take up employment and do so.
17:27