Warning. It’s a reasonably long read so you might not be up to it.
Good last question. The way to get rid of the NHS is to make it so shit, that people are desperate for something ‘better’. Your chaps are well on the way to making it shitter than it’s ever been. Cameron hacked away at it even though he’d used it a lot. Many of the current ruling class have never used it and will never use it. They aren’t part of 65000+ trolley waits, or would contemplate waiting 18 weeks for treatment, or 4 weeks for a GP appointment or be grateful for getting cancer treatment 2 months after being referred. Losing it will be no big deal to most of them.
As for lying. Where to start? We will do nursing first.
‘'The Bursary is back... we will recruit 50,000 more nurses.'
... ignoring the fact there is no time scale for more staff, neither claim can be true.
Factually, the bursary is not being reinstated. Students may receive a £5,000-£8,000 annual maintenance grant, every year, during their course, to help with their cost of living and they won’t have to pay it back. But, they will still leave uni with student debt.
Why should they be different to other students, you may ask?
Student nurses are different to other students, as their courses and placements run throughout the year, meaning student nurses have no opportunity to do the part-time jobs, other students can do, to defray their living costs, it is also not unusual for student nurse to drive, bus, or train 60 miles to a placement. The cost of which is borne by the student.
The one in 5 fall-out rate, in nurse training, is more to do with these type of living and travel problems, than it is not wanting the pressures of becoming a nurse.
Fifty thousand more nurses? NO
It turns out the figure is made up of; 14,000 trainees, 12,500 overseas recruits and 5,000 from the nursing apprenticeship scheme.
The balance would be made up by retaining 18,500 nurses, through flexible working offers, who otherwise would have left the NHS.
- 14,000 over five years, the life of the Parliament, is 2,800 'new' nurses a year, around a 10% uplift.Payng for
- 12,500 will come from overseas; as yet there is no clarity on immigration policy and immigrant health workers will have to pay around £600 for them and for eachof their family to use the NHS, they are working in. By September this year the international GP recruitment programme had brought in just 140 doctors.
- 5,000 apprentices... last year just 20 apprentices registered for the degree programme.
- 18,500 retained though better working conditions? How can anyone know what the figure for 'might-leave', is? How can keeping the staff you have become 'new staff'? Nursing is an ageing workforce, around half of leavers are retirees. Every week 233 nurses leave early, most citing 'work-life balance'.
Policy? Like much else with this PM, this is just yet more industrial scale lying.