£168m spent on NHS redundancies

Nearly £170 million was spent on NHS redundancy payouts in one year, according to leaked Government figures released by the Labour Party.

The Department of Health figures show that £168.7 million was spent on laying off NHS staff in England in 2010/11.

Labour leader Ed Miliband said the figures were "very, very worrying" and showed the coalition's NHS reforms were "the wrongreorganisation at the wrong time."

The Opposition leader said he was worried about patient care "slipping backwards" as a result of the costs of the coalition's reforms.

Ed Miliband has said it is
 'very, very worrying' that 170 million
pounds was spent on NHS redundancy
payouts in one year

Speaking on a visit to the Market Surgery GP's practice in Wath upon Dearne, South Yorkshire, Mr Miliband said he was concerned over the almost £24.5 million spent on redundancies in Yorkshire alone.

He said: "The figures show the extraordinary sums of money that are being spent on this bureaucratic reorganisation of the NHS. In Yorkshire alone, £24 million is being spent on redundancies; hundreds of millions of pounds is being spent on the reorganisation. This is not what we need.

"We need money going into patient care, not into reorganising the deck chairs. That's one of the problems with this Government's reorganisation of the NHS.

"We are seeing nurses being lost in the NHS, breaking David Cameron's promise to protect the frontline, it's very, very worrying, it shows how the Government is out of touch and it shows we've been right in saying this is the wrong reorganisation at the wrong time."

The figures showed that over £50 million was spent on redundancies in London alone. Nearly £28 million was spent in the North East, just over £24 million in the North West, over £12.5 million in the East Midlands, over £11 million in the South East, just over £8 million in the West Midlands, over £4.5 million in the South West and nearly £4.3 million in the Eastern area of the country.

The figures reflect the first phase of redundancies and further data is expected in the summer, according to Labour.