Doctors up for longer hours for more overtime pay, says Keir Starmer

Doctors and nurses will volunteer for weekend work to bring down waiting lists if they are paid more overtime, Sir Keir Starmer has told the BBC.

The Labour leader wants to spend £1.1bn a year on higher overtime payments in NHS England to get waiting lists down.

The cash would come from scrapping non-dom tax status.

The plan relies on doctors and nurses volunteering for extra shifts – but Sir Keir said it would be in their interests to do so.

He acknowledged that NHS staff are already under strain and that many of them can earn more by working in the private sector at weekends.

Labour’s overtime payments would not match the wages doctors and nurses can earn in the private sector, but Sir Keir said the party had spoken to staff organisations and he was confident they would get behind his plan.

“They are up for this because they know that bringing down waiting lists will relieve pressure on them in the long run,” he told the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire.

He said it would not require a new pay deal with NHS staff.

“You don’t need to change the contract because we will be paying them proper rates out of hours,” he said.

Sir Keir said his plan – which he claims would create two million hospital appointments a year – was crucial to his “mission” to get the UK’s economy growing.

Labour is committed to making the UK the fastest growing economy in the G7 group of leading industrial nations.

“I am confident we will get that growth. It is the single defining mission of an incoming Labour government,” Sir Keir said.

Asked how quickly people would see results, he said “within months”, claiming policies such as planning reforms and moves to attract investment could happen “very quickly” after Labour takes office.

The UK economy has grown strongly since the end of 2019 and is no longer the worst performer in the G7, doing better than Germany, although still lagging behind the United States, Canada, Japan, Italy and France.

Labour has set out a string of policies it says will be paid for by scrapping non-dom tax status, which the party claims will raise just under £2bn a year.

These include spending £171m on doubling the number of CT scanners in NHS hospitals, £111m on improving dentistry and £365m on free breakfast clubs in primary schools.

Under Labour’s NHS waiting list plan, neighbouring hospitals would also be encouraged to pool staff and use shared waiting lists. Patients would be given the option of travelling to a nearby hospital for treatment on an evening or weekend, rather than wait longer.

In June, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced plans to recruit and train thousands more doctors, nurses and support staff in a major NHS England workforce plan.