Welsh Government says it's ahead of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on NHS workforce plans

The Welsh Government says it already has a workforce plan for the NHS here in Wales but that it will look in detail at Rishi Sunak's plans to ramp up recruitment of doctors and nurses in England.

However the Welsh Conservatives say that the Welsh NHS "remains understaffed with no end in sight."

The Prime Minister today unveiled what he said would lead to “the biggest ever expansion of doctors and nurses” in the English NHS.

It’s a 15 year plan to recruit more staff including by cutting the amount of time doctors spend in medical school, driving up the number of home-grown NHS staff and ramping up apprenticeship places.

Launching it, Rishi Sunak said, “You can trust this government with the NHS. The plan rests on three principles, train retain and reform."

Health is devolved which means that Mr Sunak’s government is responsible for the NHS in England. Here in Wales, it’s the responsibility of the Labour Welsh Government led by Mark Drakeford. 

In response to today’s announcement, a Welsh Government spokesperson said: “We’ve already published a plan to set out how we will increase the NHS Wales workforce to meet future demand and deal with a worldwide shortage of medical workers, including reducing reliance on agency staff.

"We’ve increased our training budget for the ninth year in a row to £281m this year, creating an extra 527 training places, including 400 more nurses. We are looking at the detail of the plan and will respond more fully to some of the proposals in due course.”

However the Welsh Conservatives compared Labour action here unfavourably with that announced today for England. 

The party’s Shadow Health Minister, Russell George, said that “This is the kind of bold thinking we need here in Wales.

Welsh Conservatives have long been calling for a recruitment and retention plan, but after 25 years of a solution-deficient Labour Government running our Welsh NHS, the service remains understaffed with no end in sight.

“In Wales, we are currently spending tens of millions on agency nursing staff, money that should be spent on our frontline Welsh NHS services. Labour’s failure to recruit and retain talent in our health service is costing us dearly and is causing us to suffer with unique challenges like 2-year treatment waits which still exist in Wales, but have been virtually eliminated elsewhere in the UK.

 “Welsh Conservatives would protect the health budget unlike Labour who are the only government to have cut the budget, not once, but twice.”