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Tuesday 21st August 2012 | 15:16
Labour Party press release:
Andy Burnham MP, Labour's Shadow Health Secretary, speaking in response to new NHS workforce figures showing over 4800 nursing jobs lost since the May 2010 General Election, said:
"David Cameron has cut the NHS budget for two years running and we are now seeing the effects of this on the ground in the NHS."
"On his watch, we have seen the NHS lose nurses at a rate of 200 per month as hospital trusts make knee jerk cuts to the frontline."
"This explains why hospitals are under intense pressure with waiting lists rising and patients being forced to wait on trolleys."
"David Cameron needs to get his priorities right - it is no good asking hospitals to chase work overseas when the NHS is losing nurses in their thousands back home. He must stop handing out P45s to nurses and stop these damaging cuts to the NHS frontline."
Monthly NHS Hospital and Community Health Service (HCHS) Workforce Statistics in England - May 2012, released today by the NHS Information Centre show that the NHS has lost 4,823 nurses since the election. In May
2010 there were 281,431 Full Time Equivalent (FTE) qualified nurses working in the NHS. Today's figures show that this has fallen to 276,608.