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NHS Staffing

That is an interesting question, but the overall approach to staffing in all sorts of areas simply does not add up. I mentioned maternity services: we all know that there has been a failure to recruit enough midwives to provide the one-to-one care that the Government have promised. Birth rates are rising, many midwives have retired, and the problem can only get worse. If it continues, the chronic shortage of midwives could also force the closure of small childbirth centres across the country—just when the Government, quite rightly, are pushing forward with trying to give women real choice about where and how they have their babies. I turn now to the increasingly damaging row between the Government and GPs, in particular over extended hours. The Government are trying to paint that row as one between them and the unrepresentative British Medical Association, not doctors. The Government are trying to suggest that the BMA is not willing to offer more extended opening hours, but all the doctors to whom I have spoken say that they support some form of appropriate extended hours. As a result, they feel that they are being ignored and dictated to. Everyone agrees that extended hours are a good thing and, crucially, doctors agree with that too. The doctors in my constituency—indeed, all the GPs and their representatives to whom I have spoken—have made it clear that they would be more than happy to offer extended opening hours to their patients. However, they also have a very good idea of their own practice and their patients' lifestyles and needs, so they have different suggestions as to how extended opening hours could be offered to fit both their practices and, crucially, their patients' demands.