NHS Wholly Owned Subsidiary Companies
Debate between Judith Cummins and Steve Barclay(6 years, 8 months ago)
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Stephen Barclay
I will happily give way to the hon. Lady in due course.
That is not about exploitation; it is about empowering members of staff. They get higher pay in the short term in return for a less generous pension. The hon. Member for Stockton North might disagree—
Stephen Barclay
I signalled that I will give way to the hon. Member for Blaydon. She called the debate, so she should go first.
It is not accurate to say that this is simply about exploiting people if their base salary is increasing from £19,000 to £25,000, as it is in that trust. One can look at the wider bundled package of benefits and total remuneration, but one cannot describe a salary increase of £6,000 as exploitation.
Stephen Barclay
The hon. Lady is ignoring the fact that that already happens in the NHS, for existing trust staff: some staff opt out of the NHS pension, and not all the staff who TUPE-ed across in this arrangement were in the NHS pension. Once again, those on the Labour Benches want to deny the choice and options that apply to NHS staff.
Judith Cummins
I thank the Minister for giving way, because he has heard me twice now, but I welcome the opportunity. Does he not agree that the difference between then and now is that NHS trusts now are being forced down the path of wholly owned subsidiary companies because of financial constraints? It is not good enough for the Government simply to stand by and watch that happen.
Stephen Barclay
Again, that is a complete misrepresentation. The trust itself has pointed to the benefits of the arrangement. Let me give a concrete example of how the arrangement is delivering to the trust savings in the interests of patients.
Under the previous delivery system, local pathology samples were sometimes lost and delayed—that is not in the interests of patients. The QEF brought in a revised system of procuring all sample containers and issuing those to GPs across the region before delivering samples to the hospital pathology laboratory hubs within four hours. The trust forecasts that that will deliver significant benefits—indeed, other trusts are interested in the services. By operating on a more commercial model, therefore, not only has the trust improved how it deals with samples and prevented those samples from being lost as in the past, but it has put in place a system that is better for patients and attractive to GPs in other trusts who now want to contract the services.