NHS hit by first staffing fall in decade

The number of National Health Service workers fell last year for the first time since comparable records began in 1996 - a year before Labour came to power. Health unions and opposition politicians blamed the drop on government mishandling of NHS finances, but there was disagreement over the extent of the fall for front line services as labour's dodgy accounting was again called into question.

In the NHS, the headcount dropped by 17,000, or 1.3 per cent, to 1.34m. The biggest decline - of 16,600, or 6 per cent - was in support staff such as nursing assistants and auxiliaries, according to the NHS information centre.

Lord Hunt, the health minister, said the figures indicated there had actually been a rise in clinical capacity - if an increase in the number of doctors and nurses working full time was considered.

He pointed to a decline in bureaucracy, with the first reduction of NHS managers since 1995, as the number of health authorities and primary care trusts was cut. However the managerial cutbacks are likely to lead to a big redundancy bill.

Andrew Lansley, the Tory health spokesman, said the fall in headcount would have been almost 10,000 higher but for the change in the counting method.

Peter Carter, general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, said: "When you dig below the surface even further, an estimated 17 per cent of the headline increase in nurse numbers [since 1997] is made up of double-counting existing nurses working extra shifts.

"Meanwhile, internationally recruited nurses, who make up a significant number of the extra nurses, now face the prospect of having to leave at the end of their contracts under new immigration laws."

Unison, the largest public sector union, said: "These alarming figures appear to confirm our fears that health workers' jobs are now being lost because welcome extra cash is often being sucked into an endless black hole of 'strategic' reforms, which don't appear to be linked to many meaningful front-line patient care outcomes."

From:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/3e7858ea-f45c-11db-88aa-000b5df10621.html

Health Direct kicked off the first week of the New Year with Report on NHS staffing angers unions as it predicts 36,000 NHS jobs lost this year. The National Health Service is set to shed more than 36,000 jobs this year before facing "very volatile" changes in its workforce that could leave it with thousands more hospital consultants than it can afford to employ, according to a leaked document from the Department of Health.

At the same time, however, big cuts in nurse and medical training budgets last year and this year could mean the service will be short of 14,000 nurses, 1,200 family doctors and 1,100 junior hospital staff by 2011.