Non-clinical Personnel

Oral Answers to Questions — Health – in the House of Commons at 2:30 pm on 29 October 2002.

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Photo of James Clappison James Clappison Shadow Spokesperson (Treasury) 2:30, 29 October 2002

How many non-clinical NHS personnel were employed (a) on 1 May 1997 and (b) on the latest available date.

Photo of David Lammy David Lammy Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health)

Work force numbers are collected annually on 30 September. On 30 September 1996, 299,080 non-clinical staff worked in the national health service, and on 30 September 2001, there were 312,820 staff.

Photo of James Clappison James Clappison Shadow Spokesperson (Treasury)

Can the Minister tell us which is now the greater number in the NHS—the number of administrators and estate staff or the number of beds?

Photo of David Lammy David Lammy Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health)

Clearly, between 1980 and 1997 the number of beds fell by 60,000. It is now increasing. The latest figures, for September 2001, show an increase of 714. The hon. Gentleman talks about managers, but the figure is small, at 3 per cent. of the NHS work force.

Photo of Laura Moffatt Laura Moffatt Labour, Crawley

Does my hon. Friend agree that Mr. Clappison is making a huge mistake in comparing clinical and non-clinical staff? As I well know, having worked as a nurse for 25 years, our NHS contains people who are not trained as doctors or nurses but who are doing a fantastic job working in partnership with clinical staff. They include Maria Haines, who is here today and has devoted her life to Crawley hospital as a cleaner and cook. She values that position and wants to remain part of a fantastic organisation and not be judged against clinical staff.

Photo of David Lammy David Lammy Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health)

My hon. Friend is exactly right. We on the Labour Benches value the work of porters, cleaners and caterers, and have sought to deal with capacity problems in the NHS. All members of the work force—doctors, nurses and support staff—were under-capacity because of the lack of investment from the Conservatives.

Photo of Liam Fox Liam Fox Shadow Secretary of State for Health

It is worth reminding the Under-Secretary that the Labour party came to office in 1997 promising to cut NHS bureaucracy, yet it has increased to unprecedented levels. Will he explain the reason for the success in recruiting more administrators for the NHS and the failure of the Government's campaign to recruit overseas doctors? Only 26 doctors have been recruited through the Government's fellowship scheme; 19 through their global campaign. Not one is from the targeted group of heart and lung surgeons, and all came from Spain or Germany. Why have the Government been so successful in recruiting administrators and boosting bureaucracy, but so useless at attracting overseas doctors?

Photo of David Lammy David Lammy Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health)

The hon. Gentleman misunderstands the policy of recruiting overseas doctors; it is a three-year programme. We are working towards recruiting 250 doctors, and we are on that journey because of the capacity problems that we inherited in 1997. In our 2001 manifesto, we made an obligation to increase the number of nurses by 20,000 and that of doctors by 10,000. At the time, the hon. Gentleman suggested that we were making promises that we could not fulfil. We have fulfilled our promise about nurses—we now have more than 20,000.