Head of Labour commission warns of NHS staff shortages
The doctor tasked with chairing a Labour study into NHS staffing says the issue is “undoubtedly” one of the biggest challenges the health service is facing.
Scottish Labour announced Dr Miles Mack, chairman of the Royal College of General Practitioners, is to head up its NHS and Social Care Workforce Commission.
The move was announced as Labour health spokesman Anas Sarwar claimed moral amongst workers in the NHS is at “rock bottom”.
The establishment of the commission comes as the Scottish Government continues to come under pressure over vacancies within the NHS, with the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) warning in the June that there are “too few nurses”.
The government later announced an extra 2,600 training places for nurses and midwives will be created over the next four years.
Dr Mack said: “The workforce shortage within health and social care is undoubtedly one of the biggest challenges faced by the NHS as it responds to population changes across Scotland.
“This workforce commission is an opportunity to take a detailed look, with other independent stakeholders, at the situation as it is now and devise evidence-based recommendations for the future.”
Mr Sarwar said a decade of the SNP in government in Edinburgh had resulted in “severe shortages”, as he claimed NHS staff are “overworked, undervalued, underresourced and underpaid”.
“This is part of the legacy left by Nicola Sturgeon who as health secretary slashed the number of training places for nurses and midwives. We now have a Health Secretary, Shona Robison, who is out of her depth and out of ideas.
A spokesman for Health Secretary Shona Robison hit back and said: “Labour’s hypocrisy on health is staggering - when they were in office they threatened to close A&E units which were only saved by the SNP. And it is the SNP government which has delivered record high NHS funding as well as an all-time high numbers of doctors, nurses and other staff across the NHS in Scotland - an overall increase of more than 12,000 over the last decade.
“We will increase health spending even further - unlike Labour’s plans at the last Scottish election.”