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Tory NHS shambles costs us a fortune

Cuts backfire as health service forced to rehire thousands of sacked staff

Thousands of sacked NHS staff have been rehired after being handed generous redundancy packages because of "shambolic" Tory leadership, government figures revealed yesterday.

Almost 4,000 managers and administrators who have been made redundant in the last four years have had to be re-employed by the health service.

The staff have been potentially hired back at even greater expense because of the proliferation of employment agencies. They have also been allowed to keep their redundancy packages despite David Cameron promising that would not be the case.

Health Minister Dan Poulter was forced to admit the scale of the problem in Parliament.

He said: "The number of National Health Service staff estimated to have been made redundant since May 2010 and subsequently, up until November 2013, re-employed by an NHS organisation on a permanent basis is 2,570" and the number on "a fixed-term contract basis is 1,380."

The rehired employees were made redundant as part of the government's reduction of back-office NHS staff by 21,100.

Shadow health secretary Andy Burnham said: "It will be utterly galling for nurses who've just had a pay cut from David Cameron to see he's been handing out cheques like confetti to people who have now been rehired.

"We need to know whether the Prime Minister has honoured his promise to recover redundancy payments from people who have been re-employed by his new organisations."

The Prime Minister's official spokesman made clear that the reforms to allow the clawback of payments did not apply to the redundancies of the 4,000 staff, as they would originally have been employed under previous arrangements.

He also admitted that the government had still not finished changing the rules.

He said: "Reforms are being made to redundancy arrangements, including the capping of payouts and the ability to claw back some or all of payments if those individuals concerned return to work within a year of being made redundant."

However, campaign group Health Emergency director John Lister explained that part of the problem stemmed from the government's thoughtless programme of cuts, as well as changes to redundancy payments.

He said: "This shows that many of the people made redundant were still needed.

"We told them they need management expertise to deal with such massive budgets. It's an utter shambles."

Mr Lister also fingered the Health and Social Care Act, which is being used to sell off the NHS to "any qualified provider," as causing many problems.

He said: "We need to unpick this Bill because it is causing chaos, especially as it's coupled with future budget cuts and the continuing financial pressure facing the NHS.

"Labour needs to be firmly committed to repealing all of the competition elements of the act and restoring the Secretary of State to a position where he can ensure comprehensive state healthcare."

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