Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between Baroness Murphy and Lord Rooker

Wednesday 9th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Murphy]

My Lords, by now it will be no surprise to the Opposition that I do not support this amendment. It seems to be an extraordinary pedalling-backwards amendment. I ought to remind colleagues that foundation trusts already have the ability to negotiate local terms and conditions of service, so at least two-thirds of mental health trusts and half of all acute trusts already have it. They have not used those freedoms for very sound reasons, but there will come a time when gradually they will want to do so. It seems extraordinary that we would seek to remove those freedoms. I say to those who are anxious about pushing pay downwards that that has not happened at all with consultant grades of pay, where freedoms have led to much greater flexibility and a real and genuine recognition of the rarity of some consultant specialties in some areas, so it is not a good idea to remove that pay bargaining and that flexibility locally.

I do not see the Agenda for Change as being successful. Yes, it was better than the Whitley Council, which had 250 different scales and you did not know where you were; it was pretty grim. However, Agenda for Change has not been implemented with the learning and skills framework alongside in any more than 50 per cent of trusts. It has not led to productivity gains. It led to an uplift of pay but did not actually deliver what employers wanted it to deliver.

In my view, a good employment framework for local organisations must take account of local economic circumstances, the social demographic mix and the skills available in the local communities. Therefore, it must give local employers greater flexibility, as part of the autonomy of those organisations, and the ability to move away gradually from the situation that we have at the moment of profound skill shortages of nurses in some areas and an oversupply of some skills in other areas. If we could be more sensitive to local circumstances, we would get better values and rewards for staff in the NHS. I therefore very much support the Government’s approach to this and do not support this amendment.

[Lord Rooker]

My Lords, I intervene briefly in this debate. It also gives me the opportunity to apologise to the House. I removed Amendments 35 and 36 at 10 pm on Monday because I could not guarantee to be here at 3.30 pm today. I apologise if it caused confusion, but I could not be here today at that time.

On Amendment 45, I would like to know the Government’s position, because the noble Baroness said that the Government maintain their position. In some ways, the temptation for fragmentation is enormous. I am not sure whether the NHS is still the largest employer in Europe. As a totality, I think it probably is. However, we are talking here about England—or are we? The issue of devolution is crucial. I served for 12 months as a direct rule Minister in Northern Ireland, and I came across problems there relating to people doing the same job here. Also, of course, moving around Whitehall, as the Minister probably discovered himself, you go into departments and meet people doing more or less exactly the same job on vastly different salaries. The temptation of fragmentation was accepted at the centre of government, and that has led to significant problems of mobility for people moving even around Whitehall.

I am no expert on the NHS—I only know it as a patient and a family member of patients—but as far as I am concerned, it is a team effort. It is a bit like the argument we had with the firefighters. You are sending people out on a team to do a job, and they are not going out on different rates of pay, different pensions and different contracts. The one way to keep it cohesive is to maintain national pay bargaining. It does not mean that one size fits all, but the fact is, as my noble friend who kicked this off said, the industrial relations implications are enormous, given the potential for disputes that nobody wants. A dispute is created because of a festering sore on something else. The facility is not there if you have a system of national pay bargaining for healthcare staff.

The amendment refers to,

“services for the improvement of public health”.

Quite clearly, there will be transfers of public health staff who are working in local government and who are perhaps working to and with NHS rates of pay. That in itself will be a difficulty if people are going to work with colleagues in local government under a different scheme. While the Government take account of that, the temptation will be to level down to local government to get one size fits all at the local level. I do not think that that temptation ought to be accepted.

As for the issue of regional break-up, there was an argument about this many years ago when there was an attempt to pay teachers more who were prepared to go and work in the inner cities. You can have a local premium, and you can do some local work where there are factors, but in the case of nursing staff, particularly the lower-paid, and their ability to move around the country for career opportunities and to move their family, they are working within one service. Everybody knows that it is the NHS—the “N” is still there—but they are faced with the issue that, for the same job in the next region or the next but one region, they may be paid up to 10 per cent less and their pension and terms and conditions may be different. That could cause enormous problems.

I only spoke in the mental health debate last week, but the overall theme of the Bill and the many allegations that have been sent to noble Lords, of which the Minister will be aware, are that this is a grand plan—not now, but in the end—to fragment and break up the National Health Service, a plot hatched in the 1980s by Members of the other House who are currently members of the Government. The introduction of market forces into both the provision of care and other providers, and the temptation then to break up national pay bargaining to fit the new regime, which is supposed to be patient-oriented, is an enormous pressure on the Government. Ministers will be told that this will make sense at the local level. It may be asking a lot for the Minister to give a definitive response to this tonight, but the issues of industrial relations and pay bargaining in the NHS have to be settled well before the passage of this Bill, if only because during the period of implementation we do not, as my noble friend said, want discord among the staff as they implement what will be, I accept, many positive changes in the Bill.

The other issue that has to be raised, because we are talking about services to patients, is the pay and bargaining within service providers as the issue gets broken up. There will be some debates about charities, the third sector and social enterprise involvement where industrial relations and pay bargaining may be affected. However, there are other issues relating to the private sector doing jobs using NHS staff. It offers mobility as teams move. People do not have one place of work but may move between two or three different establishments, one of which may be the NHS, in which they may be based. They are expected to perform as part of the team locally, providing the services to patients in the round. What happens to pay bargaining in those situations?

If we allow fragmentation at a local level, it would be wise for the Minister to say that the status quo will be maintained. I accept that the status quo has flexibility built in, as the noble Baroness said, but it is a flexibility that does not appear to have been used. This is a bit like the Scottish Government. They had the flexibility to put up income tax by 5 per cent, but it has never been done. This is the reality. You put in that flexibility but for various reasons there are barriers to actually using it. In this case, the evidence is that the flexibility has not been used except perhaps in extreme circumstances. I do not think that it would be a good idea if we went down this route. I think there is enough evidence to keep people working together as a team with a national perspective that allows job mobility and promotion without people being afraid of moving within the same service because of the pay and conditions. I do not think that it is a good idea, and I hope the Minister will be able to take a more positive approach to this issue, even if he can only state it in general terms.