NHS backlog cannot be blamed on Brexit staff departures, health minister insists

9 February 2022, 00:04 | Updated: 9 February 2022, 08:23

Health Minister rejects claims Brexit has caused NHS staff shortages

A minister has refuted suggestions that the record NHS waiting lists in England are due to staff leaving healthcare professions because of Brexit.

The Health Secretary admitted yesterday the current NHS waiting list of six million will get longer before it starts to get any shorter, and it won't start to reduce until 2024.

Health minister Ed Argar told Nick Ferrari at Breakfast that he didn't believe Brexit was to blame for the long waits.

He said overall there has been a net increase for health staff coming to work in England from overseas.

Mr Argar said Nick was “absolutely right” to highlight a historic level of NHS vacancies, but said in 2020/21 the number of nurses in England had gone up by 11,000 and doctors by 5,000.

Nick said: “Isn’t this shortage of staff just another casualty of Brexit?

Nick highlighted figures that up between 2016 and 2019, 22,600 European nationals left the health service, 8,800 of whom were nurses.

“We’ve also seen an increase in recruitment and people joining the NHS from other countries outside the EU. I think it’s a net positive overall. I don’t think it is [a result of Brexit],” said Mr Argar.

“We’ve seen EU citizens continuing to want to work in this country, coupled with the additional workforce we are seeing coming in from other non-EU countries.”

The £12billion a year NHS Covid recovery plan announced yesterday has faced criticism for "not being ambitious enough", after it was revealed wait lists could increase until 2024.

The Government's delayed plan drew criticism from Labour, health unions and a senior Tory, for falling "seriously short of the scale of the challenge facing the NHS and the misery affecting millions of people stuck on".

Sajid Javid revealed NHS waiting lists in England will not start to fall for another two years and could even double in size despite implementing a 1.25% increase in National Insurance contributions to raise £12 billion for social care costs.

The Government also hopes to recruit 15,000 NHS workers - 10,000 nurses and 5,000 support staff - by the end of March.

The Health Secretary set out in the Commons how the NHS would tackle the backlog built up during the Covid-19 pandemic, including new targets for reducing long waits and getting people checked for illnesses more quickly.

About six million people in England are on the NHS waiting list for treatment, including hip and knee replacements, cataract surgery and tests.

According to the plan, if all 10 million people estimated to have stayed away during the pandemic came forward for treatment, and activity was not increased above pre-pandemic levels, the waiting list could hit 14 million.

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The plan will focus on "four areas of delivery", including increasing health service capacity together with the independent sector; prioritising diagnosis and treatment; reforming care such as making outpatient appointments more focused on "clinical risk and need", and increasing activity through dedicated and protected surgical hubs

Mr Javid said: "Assuming half of the missing demand from the pandemic returns over the next three years, the NHS expects waiting lists to be reducing by March 2024.

"Addressing long waits is critical to the recovery of elective care and we will be actively offering longer-waiting patients greater choice about their care to help bring these numbers down."

Speaking to reporters on a hospital visit in east London on Tuesday, Mr Javid said that "big, bold and ambitious" targets had been included in the plans.

"Some people would say 'why don't you have more targets for every type of procedure?' The problem with that would be that you would have too many targets and it might hold the NHS back," he added.

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Mr Javid confirmed all of the targets rely on "maintaining low levels of Covid", indicating they could be abandoned if another wave of infections hit the UK.

The plans also do not detail recruitment targets over the next three years.

Conservative former chief whip Mark Harper slated the waiting times as not 'ambitious enough' to warrant the £36bn price tag.

Whilst Wes Streeting, Labour’s shadow health secretary criticised Mr Javid for trying to portray the backlog as having been caused by Covid claiming was rather "a Tory backlog", caused by years of underfunding of the NHS and failure to tackle the health service’s understaffing.

He said: "We've been waiting some time for his plan to tackle NHS waiting times, we were told it would arrive before Christmas, we were told it would arrive yesterday, and it's not clear from his statement today that the delay was worth the wait."

"There's no plan to tackle the workforce crisis, no plan to deal with delayed discharges and no hope of eliminating waits of more than a year before the general election in 2024.

"The only big new idea seems to be a website that tells people they're waiting a long time, as if they didn't already know.

"What we did hear was a series of re-announcements including some perfectly sensible proposals for community diagnostic and surgical hubs - we welcome those - but the secretary of state cannot pretend that they meet the scale of the challenge."

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Speaking in the Commons, Mr Javid said that despite the NHS's "exceptional efforts", there "is now a considerable Covid backlog of elective care".

He said 1,600 people were waiting longer than a year for care before the pandemic but that figure is now over 300,000.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson added: "The NHS is there for us all in our time of need, but the pandemic has put unprecedented strain on health workers and patients alike.

"Today we have launched the biggest catch-up programme in the history of the health service backed by unprecedented funding.

"These measures will make sure patients receive the right care, in the right place at the right time as we bust the Covid backlogs and recover from the pandemic."