Labour has a plan to fix what could be the worst crisis in NHS history, the shadow health secretary has said on a visit to Swindon.

Wes Streeting, MP for Ilford North since 2015, said removing ‘non-domiciled’ tax status - where people living in Britain can say it is not their permanent home and pay tax elsewhere - will allow a Labour government to pay for a huge influx of staff.

He was speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service just before a campaign meeting with local Labour activists on a visit to Swindon.

Mr Streeting, who had visited Great Western Hospital with the Labour candidate for South Swindon, Heidi Alexander, said: “Despite the pressure and the coming winter which could be an emergency for the NHS, I was impressed by some of the really great work going on at GWH is prenatal care and the prevention of injuries to premature babies.”

But Mr Streeting acknowledged the unprecedented pressures on both the hospital and the NHS in general. He said: “The challenge is that there are not enough staff.

“We have a fully costed plan to fix that and it will allow us to increase nursing and midwifery numbers by 10,000 every year, to fund 5,000 more health visitors and double the number of district nurses.

“By removing non-dom status and making people who live here pay their taxes, which we think is only fair, we will be able to fund the biggest expansion of its workforce in NHS history.”

He added that the current Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, who was chairman of the Commons Health and Social Care Committee until the summer had previously called for a plan for a significant increase in the NHS workforce and said: “My challenge to him is to do what we are suggesting.”

He also said that the lack of social care places available for people needing them when they were leaving hospital had a huge impact on the NHS – finding a solution would help to free up thousands of hospital beds.

“We need to look at council funding and councils like Swindon have borne the brunt of central government cuts for years under the guise of devolution.

“I’d also challenge NHS leaders to spend some of their money on social care. But the government has allocated half a billion pounds increased funding for social care which has never left the Department of Health because of the political chaos this summer and autumn with new chancellors and new prime ministers.”

But Mr Streeting wasn’t willing to commit a new government to paying off the debts incurred building the new Great Western Hospital in 2003 under the Private Finance Initiative.  In 2017 bosses at GWH said they were paying £12.5m a year under the contract which runs until 2029.

Mr Streeting said: ”There’s no doubt hospital finances are a serious issues: the good news for GWH is those payments will be ending in the next few years, but there are other hospital trusts with the same issue.

“It is something we would look at, but I’m not prepared to make promises that we are not able to keep.

“The Prime Minister is now saying he won’t stick to pledges made in the 2019 election, that were in the manifesto or even that he made just six or seven weeks ago. I’m saying if we pledge something it will be something we do.

“I want people to know that Labour is the cavalry when it comes to the NHS and we have a fully costed plan to save it.”