The claim
“You are a force now of half a million nurses, 80,000 more than in 1997… We have built more than 100 new hospitals and we’ve built hundreds upon hundreds of new health centres and walk in clinics.”
Gordon Brown, speech to the Royal College of Nurses, 26 April 2010
The analysis
Lets take a look at these two statements separately – firstly the increase in the number of nurses. We looked at figures taken from the NHS Information Service to verify Gordon Brown’s claim.
The total of qualified nurses working in the NHS was 318,856 in 1997 according to Department of Health statistics. Roll forward to 2009 and 417,164 nurses were employed by the NHS, that’s 98,308 more than in 1997.
It’s important to note that these figures are a headcount of all those working as nurses and includes full time, part time staff and job sharers. There are separate figures used to calculate the equivalent amount of full time staff.
On the second half of the claim, Labour’s NHS plan in 2000 set a target of delivering 100 new hospital schemes by the end of 2010. The party says it achieved this two years ahead of schedule with the opening of a scheme at St Helens Hospital NHS Trust in October 2008.
Labour is using NHS figures that show the government has opened 88 Private Finance Initiative (PFI) hospital schemes and another 30 with public sector capital funds. A further 18 are under construction -14 of these are PFI and four are funded through public capital.
So that’s 136 schemes in place or on site altogether. The government is on timetable to have 129 of these schemes worth £10bn finished by the end of 2010.
There are currently more than 90 NHS walk-in centres open, and 152 GP-led health centres will be opening according to an NHS document dated in September 2009. The NHS has confirmed that 120 of these have already opened.
The verdict
Well – judging by these two statements – it appears Gordon Brown would get a relatively clean bill of health if he walked into one of said clinics.
The figures on nurses show that he is right on the increase in the number of nurses – if anything he’s underselling it somewhat. The actual increase of 98,308 exceeds the 80,000 he suggested in his speech.
But his claim that there are half a million nurses in the NHS is off the mark. With 417,164 nurses employed in the NHS, the true figure falls 82,836 short of the actual half a million suggested by Brown.
And Labour’s hospital developments do exceed 100 schemes. New health centres and walk-in centres together come to 242, or 210 if you exclude projects that are still under development.
So Gordon Brown’s “hundreds upon hundreds” claim is somewhat exaggerated.
