Junior Doctors Contract

Baroness Masham of Ilton Excerpts

Monday 30th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

I am delighted to do that, having been the chairman of an NHS trust for 12 years myself and knowing that my noble friend was chairman of the Imperial NHS trust and that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, who is opposite, was chairman of the Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust. Given the pressure and stresses on management and the complexity of its day-to-day role, I think that no other organisation is as challenging as a large acute hospital. Managers have to do their work in the full glare of publicity as well and it is extremely difficult, so I certainly join my noble friend in paying tribute to the extraordinary work that many of them do in the NHS.

[Baroness Masham of Ilton (CB)]

My Lords, the Statement says that the Government’s ambition is,

“to make NHS care the safest and highest quality in the world”.

How is this to be achieved without enough high-quality doctors? Do the Government agree that, regarding the teams—the therapists and nurses, as well as the doctors—we need hard-working but contented staff?

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right that the biggest asset in the NHS is the people who work in it. That is not just doctors and nurses but therapists, allied health professionals and all those people such as porters, caterers and the like. We have an extraordinary workforce, which, sadly, we often take for granted. I am always struck by the results of the NHS staff survey, which are nothing like as good as one would expect to see in many other businesses, so I agree entirely with the noble Baroness.