Stephen Morgan has said the next Labour Government will deliver a new 10-year plan for the NHS, including one of the biggest expansions of the NHS workforce in history, higher standards for patients, and a new model of care.
Labour will ensure fewer patients need to go to hospital, shifting resources to social care, GPs, care at home and mental health services, reducing the cost of hospital care in the long-term.
There are currently more patients waiting for treatment than ever in the history of the NHS. Heart attack and stroke victims wait an hour for an ambulance. Every month, tens of thousands of patients are spending entire days waiting in A&E. Hospitals are overwhelmed with patients who are fit to leave or wouldn’t need to be there in the first place if they could access healthcare earlier.
Promising to be “the shop steward for patients”, Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting has pledged to introduce better choice and service, including face-to-face appointments and seeing the same doctor each appointment for those who want to. Labour will also make it easier to book appointments so that “the days of waiting on the phone at 8am to book an appointment with your GP will be over.”
Shadow Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has announced one of the biggest expansions of doctor and nurse numbers in the history of the NHS, committing Labour to:
- Doubling the number of medical school places to 15,000 a year
- Doubling the number of district nurses qualifying each year
- Training 5,000 new health visitors a year
- Creating 10,000 more nursing and midwifery clinical placements each year
- A long-term workforce plan for the NHS, with independent workforce projections, new career paths into the NHS, and new types of health and care professionals
Mr Morgan has welcomed the proposals to tackle the crisis in access to NHS dentistry and GPs in Portsmouth, issues the city MP has been campaigning on and speaking up about in Parliament.
The Portsmouth South representative has particularly welcomed the announcement on boosting medical school places, as a longstanding supporter of the University of Portsmouth’s plan to establish a medical school, to help tackle the NHS backlog and workforce challenges the NHS faces.
The Member of Parliament for Portsmouth South, Stephen Morgan, said:
“After 12 years of Conservative mismanagement, our NHS and our economy are on the brink, with growth on the floor and basic services suffering.
“We need a growing economy to pay for modern, sustainable public services – but to grow the economy we need to start getting our local public services back on track too.
“That’s why the next Labour government will double the number of district nurses qualifying every year, train more than 5,000 new health visitors, create an additional 10,000 nursing and midwifery placements every year, and double the number of medical school places so we have the doctors we need in our NHS.
“This will help Portsmouth’s NHS with some of the fundamental problems we’re seeing and get more patients seen on time. And it will grow our economy too.”
Wes Streeting MP, Labour’s Shadow Health and Social Care Secretary, said:
“More doctors, more nurses, lower waiting times, higher standards for patients – that’s the Labour pledge at the next general election.
“Alongside investment will come the change and modernisation that the public are crying out for.
“Voters won’t accept pouring money into 20thcentury healthcare that isn’t fit for the future.
“The next Labour Government will agree a 10-year plan with the NHS to shift the focus of healthcare out of the hospital and into the community.”
