Agenda for Change: NHS Pay Restraint

Debate between Andy Burnham and Nigel Evans

Monday 30th January 2017 Westminster Hall

[Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Nigel Evans (in the Chair)]

I call Andy Burnham.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Burnham]

Of course, and the point is very well made, but I will also say again that it does not help deficit reduction if nurses are being pushed into the grip of private staffing agencies as a consequence of pay policies. That is another way in which the Government’s short-sighted approach has not in the end produced benefits for the economy, as the hon. Gentleman says, nor helped us meet the target of deficit reduction, because so much money is being wasted every year.

I will conclude on that point. The voices that have been mobilised in support of the lobby of Parliament today are real voices, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North. These people are the backbone of the national health service, the backbone of our communities and the backbone of our country. They have limits, though. Their limits are higher, but they do have limits, like everyone else. They feel taken for granted. Right now, the NHS cannot afford to lose the good will of the nursing profession. The Minister needs to listen carefully to what is being said today and he needs to make urgent representations, through the Secretary of State, to the Chancellor of the Exchequer in advance of the spring statement. A signal needs to be given to the nursing profession that the Government are listening and will take action, within the bounds of what is possible, to treat the nursing profession properly. I hope that, if nothing else, the Minister takes that message away from today.

[Mr Nigel Evans (in the Chair)]

There being no one else standing in their place, we will move to the winding-up speeches.

Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between Andy Burnham and Nigel Evans

Tuesday 20th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Grahame M. Morris]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I wonder whether I might seek your advice in relation to a declaration of interest. The hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Mark Simmonds) has made two interventions on the private patient cap and has made a declaration of interest. He is a director of Circle, a private health care company. Is it your ruling that every Member must make such a declaration if they speak during the course of this debate?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

It is up to each individual Member to make whichever declaration of interest they wish during a debate, but ultimately it is up then to the Member and the Commissioner if the Member wished to take that further.

[Andy Burnham]

The amendment gives us no protection at all, and it gives us no protection from the NHS cross-subsidising private care. There is nothing in the Bill which says, “The whole costs of the provision of that care have to be reimbursed to the national health service”, as the Financial Times has again demonstrated, and that is why we object to what is happening. We are going back to the old days of the NHS, whereby patients are told, “You can go private or you can go to the back of the queue and wait longer.” That is the choice which we removed from the NHS during our 13 years in government, and we will not accept any return of it.

NHS Risk Register

Debate between Andy Burnham and Nigel Evans

Wednesday 22nd February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

That is not a point of order for the Chair, Mr Lansley. As—[Interruption.] Order. As you well know, that is a point of debate.

[Andy Burnham]

Even though it was not a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker, let me just answer it. I was comparing December 2010 with December 2011. That is a different time frame from the one that the Secretary of State quoted, which involved a time frame since the election. The Government inherited an NHS in which those waiting times were going down, and that is why he quoted those figures. On his watch, they are going back up, and it is a disgrace that he does not have the courage to admit it.

The fact is, as I said a moment ago, that warnings have been coming from the NHS, and I want the House to listen carefully to this information. The right hon. Gentleman has not been listening. The Government will not publish the transition risk register, but we have a pretty good understanding of what is in it from the local and regional risk registers that have been made public in line with Government policy as expressed on the Treasury website. So what do they say about waiting times?

Let us take the risk register from NHS Bradford and Airedale. Its assessment warns of

“a risk of poor patient access and assessment within four hours at Leeds Teaching Hospital due to significant staffing pressures resulting in potential patient safety issues and delay”.

The likelihood of that happening is considered 4, likely to happen, and the consequences are rated 4, major, giving an overall risk register rating of 16, which is extreme.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Burnham]

I do not know why the hon. Gentleman thinks that such an intervention is appropriate. Why did he not ask the chairman and chief executive about this matter? Why does it take me to go and research the risk register—[Interruption.] Listen to the answer. Why does it take me to research the risk register in his constituency and to tell him about the risks to the NHS in his constituency, which he clearly does not know about? I suggest that he goes away from this Chamber right now and searches online, where he will find that risk register. Perhaps he will learn something about his constituency.

We are told that the market will decide. Last week, the Government received a specific warning from more than 150 members of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health that the market-based approach envisaged in the Bill will have

“an extremely damaging effect on the health care of children”.

They went on to say:

“Care will become more fragmented, and families and clinicians will struggle to organise services for these children. Children with chronic disease and disability will particularly suffer, since most have more than one condition and need a range of different clinicians.”

They stated that:

“The Bill is misrepresented by the UK Government as being necessary”

and that it will

“harm those who are most vulnerable.”

Those are not my words, but those of clinicians. [Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) wants to dismiss them, that is up to her, but she would do well to listen to them.

Warnings do not come any more serious than the one that I have just read out. It shows why the Government will not publish the risk register: they know that the case for their Bill would be demolished in an instant. People watching this debate will ask how it is possible to proceed when experts make such warnings and when NHS bodies warn of fatalities. To press on regardless would be utterly irresponsible and unforgivable. That is what the Prime Minister said today that he plans to do.

The truth is that the Government are not listening, as we have seen throughout this debate. The Prime Minister is surrounding himself with people who say what he wants to hear, while closing the door of No.10 Downing street in the faces of those who do not. He will not listen to the doctors and nurses with whom he was once so keen to have his photograph taken. It could not be clearer: he is putting his political pride and the need for the Government to save face before the best interests of the national health service. He is gambling with patients, with public safety and with this country’s best-loved institution. The Prime Minister asked people to trust him with the NHS, but we have learned today that he is running unforgivable risks with it. What his Government are doing is wrong and they need to be stopped.

I call on Members across the House to put the NHS first tonight. Vote with us for the publication of the risk register so that the public can see what this reorganisation will do to their NHS. They deserve the full truth and tonight this House can give it to them and correct the Government who have got things so badly wrong. I say to people outside who are watching this debate, join this fight to save the NHS for future generations. The NHS matters too much to too many people for it to be treated in this way. People have not voted for what is happening. [Interruption.] Not a single Government Member who is shouting at me now can look their constituents in the eye and say, “I told you that I was going to bring forward the biggest ever top-down reorganisation.” The more people who join this fight, the stronger our voice will become.

We promised this Government the fight of their life for betraying that trust and that is what we will give them. Tonight, this House has an opportunity to speak for the millions of people who care about the NHS and are worried about what is happening to it. I implore this House to take that opportunity and I commend the motion to the House.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Before I call the Secretary of State for Health, I say to the House that in my time as Deputy Speaker, this is easily and by some margin the worst-tempered debate that I have chaired. I ask Members on both sides of the House to lower the temperature so that we can have a decent and full debate.

Education Bill

Debate between Andy Burnham and Nigel Evans

Wednesday 11th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. The debate may be straying into rather more general matters than the new clauses and amendments before us.

[Andy Burnham]

I am grateful, Mr Deputy Speaker. As I have said before, the Secretary of State is in danger of collapsing under the weight of his own contradictions, and the hon. Member for Wycombe (Steve Baker) has just made that point.

Let me return to the admissions code, which we have not seen. I hope the Minister will give the House an apology this afternoon for failing to produce it. We hear that it will be slimmed down, and that it will allow founders of free schools to leapfrog local families to the front of the queue for places—the so-called Toby Young clause. The Opposition can accept a simpler admissions code, but we will not accept a weaker admissions code.

The Government’s failure to produce the code leaves us asking one question: what are they trying to hide? That is a relevant question given that today we have further evidence, from the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Brady), of the true Tory instincts on education. His new clause 2 would allow independent schools that cross over to the state sector to continue selective admissions policies, as he confirmed to me, which means that formerly independent fee-paying schools would be fully funded by the taxpayer, but would remain exclusive schools selecting students on the basis of ability. I notice that 35 or more of his colleagues felt free to put their names to this outrageous expansion of selection, presumably because they are being encouraged by his own Whips and Front Benchers.