More than 1,000 nursing posts could be paid for in London and 5,000 more around the country if the Government ditched its NHS reforms, Labour leader Ed Miliband claimed today.
More than 3,500 nurses have been lost since the Government came to power and another 2,500 were threatened, according to Royal College of Nursing estimates.
Labour claimed the Government was planning to spend £1.7 billion bringing in the Health and Social Care Bill which will hand sweeping new powers over the £60 billion commissioning budget to GPs and abolish primary care trusts.
Paying for 6,000 nursing posts for three years would cost £748 million, said Mr Miliband.
Shadow health secretary Andy Burnham said: "It is simply unforgivable to waste London's NHS budget on back-office restructuring while hundreds of nursing jobs across the capital are being axed.
"This reorganisation has distracted and destabilised the NHS at the worst possible moment and now patients in London are paying the price."
Health Minister Anne Milton rejected the Labour claims as "wrong on all counts", adding: "Since the election we've cut admin staff by 15,000 and the total number of clinical staff has remained the same. Stopping the reforms now would mean cutting nursing posts."
She claimed the modernisation of the NHS would free £1.5 billion for services and frontline staff.
The health reform Bill, which is opposed by the British Medical Association, the Royal College of GPs and the Royal College of Nursing, returns to the Lords this week. Conservatives fear the reforms could prove "toxic" for the party if NHS services deteriorate.
Mark Field, MP for the Cities of London and Westminster, said: "I've watched Andrew Lansley, and you will not find a man who is more passionate or more committed to the NHS ... but I will accept that he's not been able to say in two or three sentences exactly what we're trying to do here."
