The UK has fewer nurses per head than its European neighbours, according to SNP-commissioned analysis. The House of Commons library research showed the UK has lagged behind its European neighbours since the turn of the century.
But it also revealed that Scotland is behind many other countries in north-west Europe in terms of nurse numbers. The UK had fewer than nine practising nurses per 1,000 people in 2022. In England there were nearly seven nurses per 1,000 people, while there were nearly 12 per 1,000 in Scotland.
Every other country in north west Europe had more nurses per head than the UK as a whole. Scotland had less than Switzerland, Finland, Norway, Iceland, the Republic of Ireland, and Germany. The SNP have called for the UK Government to increase health spending in next week’s Budget to hire more nurses.
The UK as a whole had 8.7 nurses per 1,000 people in 2022. For England the rate was 6.9, while it was 11.9 in Scotland. Switzerland had 18.5 nurses per 1,000 people in 2022, while Finland had 18.9 in 2020 – which was the latest year its figures were available for.
Norway had 15.6 nurses per head in 2022, Iceland had 14.9 and the Republic of Ireland had 13.3. Germany had 12, the Netherlands had 11.5, and Austria had 11. It means the UK had just one practicing nurse for every 116 people. There was one nurse for every 85 people in Scotland, and just one nurse per 145 people in England. Finland – at the other end of the scale – had one nurse for every 53 people.
The SNP has called for the UK Government to spend an additional £16billion on the NHS in the Budget. The party said this would deliver an additional £1.6billion in Barnett consequentials which could be spent on healthcare in Scotland.
The SNP’s Westminster Health spokesperson Seamus Logan said: “The UK government is damaging the NHS in Scotland, and every part of the UK, by imposing austerity cuts and chronically underfunding and understaffing public healthcare. It’s essential the Labour government increases NHS funding by at least an additional £16billion a year at the UK budget, if it is to begin to reverse the damage inflicted by years of toxic Westminster austerity cuts and Brexit.”
“The fact that the UK Government has lagged behind our European neighbours on health spending and staffing for every single year of the 21st century shows how important it is to deliver a major boost to funding now. The SNP has done everything we can to shield NHS Scotland from Westminster cuts but Labour government plans to slash billions of pounds from public services will mean less money available for healthcare and other priorities.”
The UK Government was approached for comment.
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