Speeches by George.

“We had the workforce plan a few years ago. How confident are you that the current pipeline of training places in each of your professions is sufficient to meet future need? Could you give me a brief answer? I want to make sure that we stay on time”

“That is very helpful. In terms of understanding what this means, you are saying that in fact the acute trusts themselves, rather than having resources taken from them into community trusts, could be the facilitators and drivers of the process whereby there is that shift to the community. They could deliver those servic…”

“I am aware of time. Are you saying that even an MRI can sit in a wagon and be taken into the community?”

“Richard, your profession involves having quite expensive equipment out in the community. I come from a particularly remote rural area. Assuming that people are going to be scanned and diagnosed out in the community—we are rolling those things out—we are going to have radiographers with MRI and CT scanning capacity in c…”

“Can I turn the question the other way around? If we are seeking to shift to the community, how would having more higher‑level posts within the community, at bands 6 or 7, help to enhance the shift from hospital to community?”

“If they are prescribing, surely that would be part of the career progression. They would go up another band, would they not? Have I misunderstood?”

“You need to look right the way back to the recruitment process.”

“Finally—Kamila answered the question for all of you—what one thing with regard to nursing, particularly community nursing, do you think that we or the Government could do to improve recruitment and training?”

“To a certain extent, you have covered some of the areas that I was going to ask about with regard to career progression. In your particular specialties, what could be done to improve career progression within the community setting? You have indicated that if your particular roles remain in the hospital setting, the cha…”

“One attraction is that presumably there is not very often a night shift, whereas a hospital nurse would be doing a night shift.”

“Is that one of the reasons why people are not being attracted into the profession? Is that generally understood, and therefore registered nurses are looking to stay in hospitals or find other settings?”

“I do not want to stray into the area of retention, but, when people are looking at the job, they need to understand what is involved. What is an appropriate ratio of registered nurses to patients in the community? No doubt it varies for children, the acutely ill and so on.”

“In relation to the training, Nuffield has identified what it describes as a leaky pipeline. An astonishing number do not complete the course, which seems extremely worrying. Why is this, and what can we do to address it?”

“Steph, I wonder whether I could focus on community nursing for a second. It may just be for my edification; I am not sure. There is the interchangeability of the expressions “district nurse” and “community nurse”. Even in my own patch in west Cornwall, it seems to be interchangeable. You talked a moment ago about distr…”

“What can we learn from your experience so far? Given the fact that the workforce plan looks forward to 2036-37 and we are looking at, across the board, 70%, 80% or 90% increases in each of those professions, depending on which one we are talking about, a lot more work needs to be done. If there was one thing, because o…”

“Generally, all of them—that is community nurses and practice nurses—are on band 5?”

“It is on the record.”

“I will deal with it. If need be, I will nobble them in the Chamber or the Lobbies this evening. Is that the language I am supposed to use?”

“Yes, that may be the case. It is precipitated, as all these things are, by experience in our own patch. In my patch, there is a proposal from Lloyds for the closure of banks in the area. When it completes that range of closures, it will be going from having 39 banks throughout Cornwall 10 years ago to having just one, …”

“Thank you very much indeed for listening. Wera Hobhouse made representations.”