Jeremy Hunt warns NHS spending ‘will unravel’ without workforce plan

Former health secretary Jeremy Hunt has warned extra funding for the NHS “will unravel quickly” without the extra doctors and nurses needed.

The health committee chair said today that the lack of any mention of workforce training budgets in the Chancellor’s speech on Wednesday was “the big gap” in news for the NHS.

Before the budget, Mr Hunt, who served as health secretary for six years and who has accepted he did not do enough to increase staffing levels in the NHS, said a workforce plan for the NHS was needed.

In the budget documents, released after the Chancellor Rishi Sunak had finished speaking, the Treasury confirmed only that it would continue to fund workforce training and repeated existing promises around 50,000 extra nurses.

But many experts including the Health Foundation and think tanks as well as NHS leaders have said what is needed is a properly costed long term workforce plan so that the NHS can train enough staff to meet future patient demand.

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Source: The Independent, 28 October 2021