Labour has pledged to slash NHS waiting times and fill thousands of vacancies in the North East, but concedes that the health service’s crisis will not be solved overnight.
Wes Streeting today promised the “biggest expansion of NHS staff in history” as he visited the region. During a visit to Barnard Castle, the shadow health secretary vowed that a Labour government would cut backlogs that have left 99,000 people on waiting lists at Newcastle’s hospitals alone, while 8,400 patients in Newcastle and Gateshead were waiting more than 28 days for a GP appointment in December.
The opposition party has said it would train 15,000 new doctors a year by doubling the number of medical school places and train 10,000 additional nurses and midwives every year – a move it plans to pay for by abolishing the non-dom tax status.
