Agenda for Change: NHS Pay Restraint

Debate between Andy Burnham and Stephen Timms

Monday 30th January 2017 Westminster Hall

[Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Evans. I also thank the SNP spokesperson. I had not intended to speak but will grab this opportunity because it is an incredibly important debate.

First, I pay tribute to the Royal College of Nursing and the Nursing Times, which have captured the voices of nurses all over the country. We heard some of those voices in the excellent speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell), and I think they speak for the vast majority of those in the nursing profession.

We meet at a time when the NHS is under unprecedented strain—certainly in recent times. Workforce morale is at the heart of the quality and sustainability of NHS services. What is often forgotten and missed when we debate this subject is that the vast majority of nurses in the NHS—nearly all, actually—work beyond their contracted hours.

I will never forget being at a meeting in Bristol with a nurse from the Bristol Royal infirmary. It was when the Government were looking at introducing regional pay, which the RCN led a campaign against. At the time, the nurse was being presented with a contract and asked whether she was prepared to vary her Agenda for Change conditions by moving from a 37-hour working week to a 39-hour one—it may have been 39 to 41 hours, but it was an increase. I asked her, “What did you do?”, and she said, “Well, I signed it straight away.” I asked why, and she said, “Because I’m currently doing a 45-hour working week, but they don’t know that.” In many ways, that illustrates the point: management do not know the value of what they get from the nursing profession.

That anecdote tells the story about the job. It is more than a job to people. As my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North said, people give all of themselves to this job, but they have limits. When they feel as though those above them do not understand the commitment and the huge contribution they make to the NHS, and when they feel taken for granted, the good will and morale start to dry up. That is when the Government are in danger of achieving a false economy. The price of holding down nurses’ pay in the way that has been done over the past six years is, in the end, nurses not feeling able to go above and beyond as they normally willingly do.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I agree with the points that my right hon. Friend is making. The RCN has told us that the pay of a significant group of nurses has fallen in real terms by 14% over the period he refers to. Does he agree that that is a pretty startling statistic?

[Andy Burnham]

My hon. Friend the Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) said that this is a pay cut. We should not call it a pay freeze because it is, in fact, a pay cut. The Government have manipulated the figures in this area. Let us call it what it is: a pay cut that has now been sustained over a number of years.

People are at their limits. They cannot carry on having their pay cut every single year while they face other pressures and rising costs, such as accommodation costs, without there being a consequence. The consequences will be for their own sense of wellbeing, their own mental health or, indeed, their children’s quality of life. Nurses are now saying, in large numbers, that enough is enough.