Therese Coffey opens the door to more foreign nurses to plug NHS staff shortage | Health Secretary says ‘I don’t mind if they are coming from abroad’ as she battles to deal with long waiting lists

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  1. As a front-line politician, few experiences can be as frightening as beginning to lose the ability to form words. “It was quite an odd week,” Thérèse Coffey recalls with understatement.

    The new Health Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister is still settling into the briefs handed to her by her friend Liz Truss, a double role that confirms her centrality to the Government.

    But speaking to The Telegraph in her first newspaper interview since the promotion, Ms Coffey begins by looking back to spring 2018, when she saw the NHS at its best.

    The Tory MP for Suffolk Coastal and, at the time, environment minister had caught an ear infection and had it diagnosed. But as the days wore on, the problem would not clear.

    “I was still able to function, this is the issue,” she recalled. “I did a Westminster Hall debate. I gave a speech. I was just in a lot of pain and I knew something wasn’t right.

    “It was thanks to my sister phoning the A&E in St Thomas’s to say: ‘I’ve never, ever known my sister like this ever before’. So they did an MRI scan and then I was whisked into hospital.”

    The infection, it turned out, had spread to part of Ms Coffey’s brain. An emergency operation followed. In the weeks of recovery that came next, remembering words proved tricky.

    “If the infection had been on this side, the reaction would have been a lot more physical,” said Ms Coffey, tapping the unaffected part of her head. Instead, it was language that suffered.

    “I had to rewire my brain a bit to do sudoku, all that stuff. I couldn’t even remember what was on my feet. My sister told me it was ‘slippers’.

    “So I’ve rebuilt a lot of words. Even now, there are phrases that if I haven’t used them – I mean I’m probably past that by now – but I have to think it through.”

    She added of her recovery: “The brain is an amazing thing.”

    Such an intense experience with the UK healthcare system has brought a degree of personal understanding to her new brief that other past health secretaries may have lacked.

    Perhaps it gave her a deeper sense of what it means to be reliant on the NHS? “Absolutely,” she said without pause. “I’m very conscious of that.

    “The NHS tends to be brilliant in an emergency, absolutely amazing. We just want to continually try and see what works really well in some parts of the NHS.

    “I’m finding that very interesting already. Just the complete variation in patient experience. There are some things we need to address more significantly, I get that. But that is one of the things where we can, I hope, get some impact pretty quickly.”

    Tory cabinet ministers come in all shapes and sizes. There are egotists, there are orators. There are those better at television appearances than policy delivery, and vice versa.

    Ms Coffey comes across as a pragmatist. She developed a reputation as a details person in her last brief at the Department for Work and Pensions, able to understand the complexities of the Universal Credit system and how to tilt the incentive structure while helping the most vulnerable through the strains of the Covid-19 lockdowns.

    In the new job, Ms Coffey has come up with her “A, B, C, D” – ambulances, backlogs, care, and doctors and dentists.

    Policy development is still in its infancy. She has been in the job less than a month and wants to set priorities and principles, before drilling into each problem area.

    But during the conversation on the side of Conservative Party conference in Birmingham, Ms Coffey shone light on some of the big challenges in her brief.

    The “B” in her alphabetical target list, “backlogs”, is one the public is watching closely. Some 6.7 million people are on NHS waiting lists in England, with many voters knowing someone who has a story of shocking delays.

    Ms Coffey has said GPs must offer non-urgent appointments within two weeks. She will also publish what has been dubbed “league tables”, effectively naming and shaming those practices with the longest wait times.

    “It’s not so much league tables. It’s about having transparency,” she explained. “That will allow us to have a bit more laser-like focus, frankly, on trying to deal with what’s happening there.

    “It’s a variety of things. One of the beauties of being, of course, a constituency MP is that you see this directly yourself and you know where the best practices are and you know where the people are struggling. Having that kind of greater understanding right across the NHS network I think will be really helpful.”

    She countered suggestions it is too harsh, saying: “It’s not about criticising, it’s about: ‘This one’s doing brilliantly this other one isn’t.’ They’re not doing that on purpose. But it’s to try and make sure that appropriate interventions can be offered.”

    What about some areas Ms Coffey is yet to share her views on? For one, the persistent shortage of doctors, nurses and social care workers right across the country.

    Her predecessor in the department, Steve Barclay, went public during the brief months he held the job saying that more foreign workers were needed to plug gaps.

    Does Ms Coffey want to increase the number of foreign visas for healthcare workers? “I just want to make sure we’ve got the right number of people,” she said. “I don’t mind if they are coming from abroad or are home-schooled here.

    “But I think it’s important recognising there’s quite a lot of people who no longer want to work permanently for the NHS.”

    Ms Coffey said she will not “sit here and write a complete NHS human resources plan”, noting recent rule changes that allow more overseas care workers to come to the UK.

    So it sounds like you would be supportive if an increase in foreign healthcare workers was needed? “Yeah,” she said. “I think it’s a case of recognising there’s a lot of vacancies. That’s what trust tells us.”

    The position foresees a tussle coming for the Truss government – between department heads who want more foreign workers to help fill skills shortages and others, not least Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, pushing to bring down overall immigration numbers.

    On other areas, Ms Coffey is less willing to bite. There has been concern about the scale of part-time work from GPs.

    Just one in four GPs works full-time. Many are working three days a week. At the same time, getting face-to-face appointments is becoming a major challenge.

    Is that a concern? “A lot of investment goes into people’s training and if it’s just part-time work, then that’s perhaps not what was anticipated when people signed up to that,” said Ms Coffey.

    “But nevertheless, they tend to be self-employed. I mean, they’re independent contractors, or they might be salaried within a practice, and I’m not going to start condemning people who move to part-time work.

    “I appreciate there are some people who think that’s outrageous, but we just got to work with how people want to live their lives.”

    Likewise, there is little appetite for private healthcare reform. The curiosities of the system have been noted in the past – that those who opt into private healthcare at work still pay tax on contributions and private GPs are often not able to write NHS prescriptions.

    Is there danger people who choose private health care are discriminated against versus the current system, perhaps? “No,” came the one-word reply.

    “At the moment, I’m not trying to fix private health care. What I’ve said is where there is a capacity within the independent sector and we want to get on with backlogs. That might be an appropriate way that we can and should use it, if that helps patients. But I’m not setting out on a private health agenda.”

  2. When Coffey was appointed as health secretary people had their doubts based on her appearance and past statements, but she seems to be among the few cabinet members doing her job in earnest.

  4. … while Suella Braverman and Kemi Badenoch pipe up as every fringe event that the UK has too much immigration …

    … it really does resemble a free-for-all.

  5. Just like like the woman she reminds me of, she can actually (hopefully) be quite good, when she’s not shit stirring and being a slightly out of date (the amount of ways this women is similar to my nans sister is fucking terrifying, its like invasion of the body snatchers, but if they went back in time about 6 years before they stole a body) let’s just hope 1 good thing can come out of this train wreck of a government, if it comes from Mrs coffee that’ll supprise bloody everyone

  8. Immigrants are going to be sought after by every western government in the world, that’s because the birth rates of countries is dropping so fast they’ll have no choice to open the gates, the racist wackos that want to push the immigrants out will be begging to bring them back, you’ll see.

  9. Have we tried not funneling money to the rich; destroying the economy; proactively shutting down tax loopholes and tax enforcement on companies and people worth over a few million.

    No? Maybe we could try that first we might then be able to afford to keep more of our nurses, pay them a good wage and maybe make the profession feel valued again

  10. Are these the same foreign nurses who worked here happily up until the Conservative’s Brexit and then found themselves alienated and left en masse, that are being welcomed back with open arms? Lets see how that one pans out.

  14. Oh dear Brexiteers, wasn’t leaving the EU meant to stop this and give back control of borders?

    So now you’re going to have the same immigration as when you were in the EU, and none of the perks…..

    Kind of glad the Tories you voted in are fucking you lot over too 😊

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