Health and Care Professions Council: Registration Fees

Debate between Liz Twist and Mary Glindon

Thursday 14th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham) for securing this important debate, which I am glad to have the opportunity to speak in. For many years, it was my privilege to work with many healthcare professionals, so I take a keen interest in this subject. I was happy to add my signature to the letter to the HCPC to oppose the, at the time, 18% proposed increase in fees.

It is right that healthcare professions should be regulated and that those bodies should be independent of the Government, which means that fees must be attached to the registration. Having set fees, however, those bodies must have a view to the people and the professions that they regulate. Many people covered by the Health and Care Professions Council are not big earners, despite playing an incredibly important part in our healthcare system, and they are often missed out when we talk about healthcare workers.

We talk about doctors and nurses, but we rarely talk about all the other NHS staff who are integral to our healthcare system. I have worked with paramedics, occupational therapists, dieticians and many others, who are an important part of that healthcare team. In the last 18 months, I have had personal experience in my family of the great work they do—on stroke rehabilitation, for example. It is important work, but the pay is not great. Typically, people are paid at band 5, which starts at £23,000 a year, so we are not talking big bucks.

[Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a good argument about the different levels of pay. Does she agree that one of the most unfair arguments for raising the fees is that they are lower than for other professional bodies? Dentists and doctors get paid much more money, so there is no fairness in that comparison.

[Liz Twist]

I agree with my hon. Friend and I will come on to that point later.

Although we in this House talk about how valuable healthcare workers are in all kinds of debates, the fact is that their pay has not kept in line with the real cost of living, so an 18% increase in registration fees is huge and out of all proportion with the pay increases that they have had in recent years. Most of them do not have a choice about whether to register; they must be registered to be able to work. The increase will bring the total increase in registration fees to 40% since 2014, which is incredible.

As hon. Members know, one issue that the NHS is facing is staff shortages in certain areas. It cannot be ignored that something such as this increase can only be a disincentive to staff looking to do those important jobs. As other hon. Members have said, another key issue is the impact of social workers. They are currently covered by the HCPC, but they are about to go off to their own regulatory body. The significance of that should not be lost. While it will mean a reduction in income, of course, it will also mean a significant decrease in the number of fitness-to-practise cases, which are inevitably expensive to prepare. Currently, 25% of HCPC registrants are social workers, but more than 50% of fitness-to-practise cases are in the social work field. That significant factor should be taken into account when the HCPC considers its fees.

On fitness-to-practise cases, I well remember from representing people how devastating it is for any health professional to face a complaint or a fitness-to-practise case, but many people are being held in limbo waiting for their case to be heard, or even awaiting a decision that the case should not be pursued. A 2018 report by the Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care was critical of the HCPC and suggested that cases were being referred to the fitness-to-practise panel by its investigation committee too readily. The report stated:

“In our review of its performance this year, we set out our concerns about how the HCPC approaches the discontinuance of cases. Our view was that the approval of discontinuance decisions by the HCPC (with no additional information or evidence being presented since the decision of the Investigation Committee to refer the case) may indicate that the Investigation Committee is failing to identify when there is no case to answer.”

Clearly, that has a significant impact on the professional under investigation and on the operation of the HCPC, and is a factor in costs.

As other hon. Members have mentioned, the proposed 18% increase will have a disproportionate impact on part-time workers, who are predominantly women and mostly in the NHS, because it is a flat-rate fee. That does not seem reasonable.

We hope that the Health and Care Professions Council will listen to the comments made in the debate. Unison has also made some suggestions that the HCPC should consider. First, there should be a pause in implementing the decision to increase fees until the impact of social workers moving away can be assessed. It will clearly be a significant factor in the future, so it seems appropriate that the full impact should be known before an important decision to increase by 18% is made. Secondly, I am told that the Health and Care Professions Council has £18 million of cash reserves, which should be used to allow the impact of the move of social workers to be considered before fees are raised. Thirdly, there should be a more stringent look at other means of raising revenue, rather than just increasing fees.

The Health and Care Professions Council carried out a consultation on the fee increase. By its own admission there were 2,398 responses, many of which opposed the proposed increase. The HCPC has written to explain its position to those of us who signed the letter that we wrote before it made the decision. In that letter, it compared its fees with those of other healthcare regulators. Frankly, that comparison is not valid, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Tyneside (Mary Glindon) has already said. A comparison with the fees paid by dentists, which are £890 a year, or doctors, which are £390 a year, is completely misleading. Typically, HCPC registrants will be paid vastly smaller salaries, so it is not just apples and pears, but apples and strawberries. There is a real mismatch and disparity in the comparisons being made, so they are not valid.

As other hon. Members have, I call on the Health and Care Professions Council to reconsider its position and to agree to Unison’s suggestions as a way to avoid the 18% increase in fees.

Equitable Life

Debate between Liz Twist and Mary Glindon

Thursday 31st January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

It is an honour to follow the eloquent and succinct right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne). I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) and my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton) for their work as chair and co-chair of the all-party group in fighting for justice for Equitable Life policyholders.

I make no apology for repeating some of what has already been said, and I am sure others will do the same. It is a disgrace that there are over 1 million victims of this pensions scandal. It is even more disgraceful that it is 11 years since the ombudsman said that victims had lost their pensions because of a decade of serious serial regulatory maladministration, and it is a total disgrace that, despite the Treasury admitting it had blame for the scandal, these policyholders still have not been compensated in full.

The north-east regional branch of EMAG has advised me that there are over 2,000 victims of this scandal in North Tyneside. In recent years I have been contacted by several constituents who are rightly aggrieved because they have received only just over 22% of their pension pot. One constituent is in the group of around 8,500 people who are considered the oldest and most vulnerable— the pre-1992 policyholders—and who have been treated less favourably than those who bought their annuities later. I spoke to him yesterday, ahead of this debate, and he pointed out that, sadly, a number of these annuitants are no longer with us, as other colleagues have also mentioned. He is particularly concerned that the Government keep safe the data relating to Equitable Life annuitants until the money is available to recompense those who have lost out. I hope the Minister will reassure my constituent on that request today.

My constituent is, of course, correct in pointing out that some victims will never see justice done. No one is getting any younger, and it is heartbreaking that thousands upon thousands of Equitable Life victims, through no fault of their own, have been left without the security they thought they had wisely invested in for their old age.

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

I am one of the 2017 intake who have been contacted by constituents affected by this. Does my hon. Friend agree that, if we want people to save for their future through a pension, we have to put right the wrongs that have been done? Modest people who saved well for their pension have now lost out in their old age.

[Mary Glindon]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question, which I will be addressing later.

It is frustrating for us to know that justice has not been done, but how much worse must be the anger and frustration of those who feel cheated? Today’s motion specifically calls upon the Government to make a commitment to provide full compensation to victims of the scandal, with the end of austerity now in sight. EMAG’s demands have been put forward reasonably. As the Chancellor announced in the Budget that austerity is over, it seems that the statement by one of the Minister’s predecessors, following a meeting with an APPG delegation two years ago, that the demands—the payment scheme funding for the pre-1992 annuitants and the £2.6 billion funding to recompense fully the 895,000 victims—could not be met because of public purse constraints, even if they were spread over a period, and because it would run contrary to the Government’s efforts to restore sustainability to the public finances, is no longer applicable. That has been mentioned by previous speakers, and I think the Minister will hear it again.

Paying these victims what they are owed will not only be doing what is right but will send out the message that people can and should save for their retirement, in the knowledge that the Government will protect them if such a scandal, heaven forbid, were ever to happen again. I hope the Minister will be able to assure Members present that the Equitable Life victims we represent are no longer subject to the constraints of austerity. It is shameful that the years of austerity were ever used as an excuse for the Government to deny their responsibility for paying these pensioners and future pensioners their entitlement.

My message to the Minister and the whole Treasury is that, in these times of trouble and uncertainty, they should take the opportunity to restore some faith in the Government and our Parliament by, at last, paying the Equitable Life policyholders their rightful due.

Traidcraft and Fair Trade

Debate between Liz Twist and Mary Glindon

Tuesday 18th December 2018 Westminster Hall

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Traidcraft and the future of fair trade.

It is a pleasure to open this debate under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I start by thanking my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) and the hon. Member for Colchester (Will Quince), who chairs the all-party parliamentary group for Fairtrade, for their support in making the application to the Backbench Business Committee.

In one of those strange coincidences, when I was thinking about my Christmas card competition for local primary schools last summer, an officer from Gateshead Council—my local authority—telephoned the office and suggested that this year the theme should be fair trade. That seemed an excellent idea to me. Gateshead prides itself on being a Fairtrade authority. In Traidcraft, a Fairtrade company and charity based on the Team Valley trading estate, we had a real local connection and a topic that would get pupils thinking about just what fair trade means for us here in the UK and for producers who grow, create and supply fair trade goods and products, especially in the lead up to Christmas, when we think of gifts and rich food.

I was shocked to hear in September that Traidcraft was in difficulty, facing potential closure and consulting its 60-plus staff based in its Team Valley warehouse and offices on potential redundancies. Traidcraft has a personal significance to me. Over many years I have been a Traidcraft customer, and its craft products are scattered around my home. Some may even have appeared as raffle prizes over the years. Indeed, I have been a trader, although sadly not a very successful one.

[Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. I could share many happy memories of buying Traidcraft goods from the late 70s. My sister used to run a stall for Traidcraft in her church, St Robert’s in Morpeth. She ran an evening at the place where I worked in North Shields. It is not just about getting gifts and helping people to have nice things from abroad; what was crucial was the raising of awareness for people who otherwise would not be aware of the need for fair trade.

[Liz Twist]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that Fairtrade traders, through Traidcraft, have worked to sell goods and, importantly, to raise the social and fair trade issues around those goods.