NHS Long-term Plan

Debate between Andrew Murrison and Matt Hancock

Monday 7th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I welcome much of the tone of the hon. Lady’s remarks. The truth is that it is critical to ensure that we have the workforce and the people to deliver the plan. There is a whole section of this plan, as well as ongoing work, to deliver that. I want to clear up this point: in the immigration White Paper published by the Home Secretary before Christmas, as now, there is no cap on recruitment numbers for nurses and doctors. The proposal is that the cap will not necessarily apply within a shortage occupation. We will be recruiting people from around the world to work in our NHS.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

I very much congratulate my right hon. Friend on the 10-year plan and on his announcement of the Harding review. Will Baroness Harding look particularly at the way in which pay and pensions are structured for general practitioners and pinch-point specialists within the NHS, since they are retiring or going part time at the moment—a full 10 years before the time they had anticipated when they went to medical school?

[Matt Hancock]

We are already looking at that subject. It is very complicated because of the nature of assets owned by GPs—their value having risen sharply over the last generation. However, we have record numbers of GPs in training. Although we need to ensure that we retain more GPs and encourage as many as possible to be full time, we have successfully breached our target; we are training more GPs than we had planned to, and that is a good thing.

Data Protection Bill [Lords]

Debate between Andrew Murrison and Matt Hancock

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Wednesday 9th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

That is absolutely right. The minimum access cost will be £50, which means that everybody has access to justice at low cost. There is more to it than that, however. Some people argue that the £60,000 limit on damages is too low, but the arbitration scheme does not stop somebody going to court, so there is access to justice where damages should be higher. The arbitration scheme is an addition to, rather than a replacement for, going to court. It introduces a robust and fair system that is easy for everybody to access, so everyone can have access to justice.

The section 40 amendments would, ironically, have the opposite effect, because anybody with the means to take small newspapers to court could stop them publishing stories for fear of having to pay the costs, even if they get everything right.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

Is it not the case that IPSO proposed its arbitration scheme only when a number of colleagues had tabled amendments that were distinctly unhelpful to the print media? Can we trust that organisation? Will my right hon. Friend be extremely careful about removing the boot from the neck of IPSO, particularly in relation to the review period? I know that he will come on to talk about that shortly, but will he consider tightening the review period, because at the moment it gives IPSO the best part of a decade before there is any prospect of further change if the industry does not behave itself?

[Matt Hancock]

I agree with the sentiment, which is that we have to ensure that the press remains free but also fair and reasonable, and that is the purpose of the amendment proposing a review period of four years. We will not let matters lie.

Some have asked, “What happens if newspapers pull out of the IPSO scheme?” I think that would send a terrible signal of the newspaper industry’s attitude to the standards that it rightly ought to sign up to. The review is there precisely to address my hon. Friend’s concerns.

BBC Pay

Debate between Andrew Murrison and Matt Hancock

Tuesday 9th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is right to suggest that the problem is not principally that women are paid too little in organisations that are, in one way or another, funded by the public, but that men are paid far too much. What cognisance has he taken of organisations beyond the BBC, such as universities, that are quite egregious in this matter, and what does he think can be done to sort it out?

[Matt Hancock]

Over the past seven or eight years, we have brought in measures to ensure that people in the public sector are paid appropriately and that there is much more transparency. We implemented those measures in the civil service and in other areas of public life, so that there was not this problem of too high pay at the top, but some organisations have not implemented the same sorts of approaches, and now, where a body is funded by the taxpayer or licence fee payer, the problems of ignoring the need for that restraint are being brought into the light.