Wes Streeting has insisted no one will be “forced” to work overtime under Labour’s plans to put on an extra 40,000 appointments each week by utilising weekend and evening slots, writes our Political Correspondent Amy Gibbons.
The shadow health secretary confirmed the arrangement would be on a voluntary basis, with staff paid at around one and a half times their normal rate to take on the extra shifts.
Speaking to BBC Radio Lancashire, Mr Streeting said: “No member of staff is going to be forced to do it with good reason, because there’ll be some staff who say, ‘well, hang on a minute. I already feel I’m doing more hours or as many hours as I can do, I’ve got family or caring responsibilities’.
“The thing that gives me reassurance is that where this has been tried and tested in hospitals in London, in Leeds, where Keir Starmer and I went to see this working in practice, they’ve had no problem filling these shifts.
“Unlike other parts of the NHS, they’ve never had to rely on agency workers, temporary workers. The regular salaried staff are choosing to do this work because not only can they see the value of it, more often than not they’ve been the staff that have been designing as well as delivering the service.
“And that’s why to help the NHS improve overall, we’re going to take our best of the NHS to the rest of the NHS with new teams from those hospitals to train up and advise other hospitals to achieve the same success that they have.”
