Helen Whately joined Naga Munchetty on BBC Breakfast to discuss the volume of NHS nursing applications and procedures surrounding care home visits. However, BBC viewers took to Twitter to slam the row as they vented their frustrated at the Care Minister “ignoring questions” from Munchetty.
Munchetty began: “This increase we’ve seen is a 34 percent increase in applications to nursing courses in England. What does that do for numbers? Of course there is a target by the government to increase the number of nurses in the coming years.”
“Well it’s really good news. We’ve seen applications for nursing courses up by over a third to 50,000 people to start this autumn so a real testament to people’s desire to step forward to be apart of our health and social care system,” Whately.
“We want to, and need to, increase the number of people working in it and that includes our determination to have an extra 50,000 nurses in the NHS by the next parliament.”
Interrupting, Munchetty said: “Just to be clear on that number that 50,000 target that includes 19,000 nurses who will be retained with incentives.”
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“So in order to achieve that number of nurses we want to increase the number of new nurses starting work. So that’s the UK students coming forward and training and of course to hold on to the excellent nurses we already have,” Whately replied.
“Some nurses retire as they come to the end of their career but there are some nurses who aren’t staying with the NHS and we really want more people to stay.”
Munchetty asked: “Do you know in terms of the applications what percentage is likely to be accepted?”
“So what we’ll do and this is what we did last year as well, is we work with the universities and work with the NHS organisations that provide the placements for nurses to make sure we have as many places and placements as possible,” the MP replied.
“Can we talk about care homes?” Munchetty asked, moving the interview along. “Earlier this month a group of charities called for them to be reopened for visits from March 1, can that happen?”
“I really want to enable more visiting in our care homes and just to be clear at the moment we are encouraging care homes to allow visits but they are restricted. You can’t have a normal indoor visit at the moment,” Whately said. “I really want to open care homes up.”
“Would that be dependent on whether residents and those visiting have been vaccinated?” Munchetty asked.
“There’s not a direct dependency like that I mean clearly care homes have been at the top of the list for the vaccination programme. Visiting will be taken step by step and when visiting does return to normal we will be asking people to still use PPE,” Whately explained.
BBC viewers weren’t impressed with the interview as one tweeted: “Helen Whately is on BBC Breakfast for the government this morning. Talk about ignoring the questions.”
“Helen Whately … ‘just to be clear..’ clear? just no …no…no…No… ruined my morning for the next hour. Please go away! … #bbcbreakfast,” another vented.
A third wrote: “The timeline for #bbcbreakfast is full of people pointing out the walking car crash that is Helen Whately or people being racist towards Naga.”
“This person on BBC Breakfast has not answered a single question Naga has asked her,” a fourth suggested.
Someone else said: “Oh god, the useless @Helen_Whately is on @BBCNews #BBCBreakfast This uptick in nursing applications is nothing to do with the government.”
However, other viewers felt Munchetty wasn’t giving Whately the opportunity to respond as one tweeted: “Rude interviewing of a politician again!! I’m really fed up with seeing continually interrupting show some respect please. #BBCBreakfast.”
Another added: “Seems that the mission of @TVNaga01 on #BBCBreakfast is to interrupt as much as possible this morning!”
BBC Breakfast airs daily on BBC One at 6am.
