Jonathan Ashworth MP, Labour’s Shadow Health and Social Care Secretary, commenting on the NHS Confederation’s report, Getting the NHS Back on Track: Planning for the Next Phase of Covid-19, which sets out some of the ways local NHS organisations, local authorities and social care services will need support, said:

“Ministers need to take heed of these warnings from NHS leaders now. It is inevitable that the Covid-19 pandemic will impact our health service in the months ahead but it is vital that ministers begin to address this backlog of delayed treatment and rising clinical need.

“We need a new resourced plan for the NHS; a strategy that enables us to move between the competing demands of the Covid-19 pandemic and non-Covid related care in the months and years ahead.”