It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood) for raising this important issue. I join her in thanking all NHS staff for everything they do for us. The workforce are the beating heart of everything our NHS does and stands for. I hugely value the work of everyone who works in health and care, from consultants to care workers, nurses to neurosurgeons, and porters to physios. I thank all hon. Members from across the House who have taken part in this important debate. In the time available to me, I will try to respond to as many of the themes raised as possible—I have been franticly scribbling throughout the contributions.
I have only been in post for a handful of weeks, and in that time I have seen the very best and the future of our NHS with cutting-edge technologies and innovation. For example, it was only earlier this week when I saw genuinely world-leading world genome sequencing. Innovation and technological advancement is only as good as the highly trained and qualified clinicians who operate it or, importantly, who interpret the data. Health is a human business. I know this from my own family’s experience of the NHS, and I am sure hon. Members know that too. Only caring NHS staff can provide the patient-centred and compassionate care that we all hope and expect when we interact with our NHS. That is why I am personally passionate about supporting our health and care staff, particularly when we are in challenging times. Last week, the Chancellor announced an additional £3.3 billion a year in the autumn statement to assist in this endeavour.
I turn first to workforce pressures, which were raised by the hon. Members for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater), for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), for Bradford West (Naz Shah) and for Birmingham, Erdington (Mrs Hamilton)—I am particularly grateful to her for sharing her 25 years of nursing experience. I am acutely aware that the workforce remain under sustained pressure. Staff worked tirelessly through the pandemic and they have my huge thanks and gratitude for doing so.
I know that every day hundreds of thousands of NHS staff provide high-quality care under considerable challenges. As well as the pressures we see every winter, in the summer, which is usually—I am told in the NHS you cannot use the Q-word, which stands for quiet—less busy, we had covid waves where we would not ordinarily. There is also the recovery of elective care and the 7 million people on waiting lists, including the 400,000 who have been waiting over a year, as the hon. Member for Wirral West rightly pointed out. There is the rising number of covid and flu cases—I take this opportunity to make a public health announcement encouraging people to check their eligibility and get their covid and flu jabs if they have not already done so.
Of course, it is vital that we support the workforce, not just now but for the future. The NHS workforce have grown since last year, with an extra 3,700 doctors and 9,100 nurses, but I understand that—this point was made eloquently and articulately by hon. Members—demand is growing significantly, too.