50,000 NHS jobs to be cut
pharmafile | February 24, 2011 | News story | | False Economy, GPs, NHS, NHS reforms, TUC, nurses
NHS trusts are preparing to make a major series of job cuts as the health service wrestles with the need to reduce its spending.
A number of doctors and nurses across all trusts will be among those affected as the NHS pursues the steep cost savings target it has been set.
In all the health service is poised to cut around 53,000 positions, according to Freedom of Information requests by False Economy, a trade union backed anti-cuts website.
TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: “False Economy’s new research on NHS job cuts gives the lie to government claims that the NHS was safe in their hands.
“Not only are they reorganising the NHS in a way that strips out many of its founding principles, but also insisting on immediate cuts that will certainly harm frontline services. To echo Andrew Lansley, it does not get much more frontline than that.”
The true scale of the cuts is likely to even higher than the research suggests because a number of trusts have yet to decide their workforce plans.
But a Department of Health spokesman told InPharm the analysis was a “scaremongering” tactic by False Economy.
“We promised to reduce NHS bureaucracy and plough this money straight back into patient care, and that is exactly what we are delivering,” the spokesman said.
“Since last May, there are almost 2,500 more doctors, more nurses and more midwives – and 2,000 fewer managers.”
The figures from False Economy are double those forecast by the Royal College of Nursing forecast last November, and the expected reductions will take place over the next five years.
One of the biggest culls they uncover will be at Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, where 1,755 full-time posts will be cut, including 120 doctors and dentists, and 620 nurses.
Overall a minority of jobs are expected to be lost from ‘natural wastage’, but False Economy believes the majority of losses stem from the health service’s need to meet the so-called Nicholson Challenge.
This requires the NHS to make around £20 billion in efficiency savings by 2015.
Dr Hamish Meldrum, chairman of the doctors’ group the BMA, said: “Slashing posts represents a false economy. Doctors and other NHS staff across the UK are working hard to deliver services more efficiently.
“Even cuts to backroom staff frequently have an impact on clinical workers, who have to pick up the administrative burden.”
Details of the FOI requests are available online, showing results for each acute, primary care and mental health trust in England, and for trusts in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Ben Adams
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