Nurses and Midwives: Fees

Debate between Ann McKechin and David Anderson

Monday 23rd March 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mr Anderson]

That is the core of the debate. I am concerned about the fact that more and more cases are being referred. It appears that there has been a failure on the part of hospital management or health management in general, who are, in some cases, referring nurses and midwives to the NMC instead of using their own disciplinary procedures. They are giving away their responsibilities, and in doing so they are adding to the cost and the work load of the NMC, which should be dealing with other issues of equal importance.

Believe it or not, the NMC is the world’s largest regulator, with 670,000 nurses and midwives on its register. It is in the unique position of having a guaranteed income of £71 million a year. What other business or organisation has such a luxury nowadays? The NMC’s primary purpose is to protect patients and the public in the UK through effective and proportionate regulation of nurses and midwives. It is required to set and promote standards of education and practice, maintain a register of people who meet those standards, and take action when a nurse or midwife’s fitness to practise is called into question. By doing so, the NMC seeks to promote public confidence in nurses and midwives, and in the regulation thereof. However, the fee rise has done little or nothing to raise the confidence of the nurses and midwives whom the NMC regulates. Many, including some in my own constituency, feel that when they voiced their opposition to the fee increase, they were opposed or—even more worryingly—completely ignored.

For a nurse or midwife to practise in the UK, they must be on the register. They have no choice. It is illegal to work as a nurse or a midwife in the UK without being on the NMC’s register. To join and to stay on the NMC’s register, all nurses and midwives must pay the annual registration fee.

[Ann McKechin (Glasgow North) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate, especially as I tried for about three months last year to secure a debate on this subject. Does he agree that, particularly given the 60% increase in the fee over the past few years, the fact that there is no fee reduction for nurses and midwives who work part time is becoming a much greater concern and is discouraging people from coming back to work part time?

[Mr Anderson]

That is central to the discussion. I have been struck by the fact that nurses who are relatively well paid and work full time will have to pay exactly the same registration fee as those who work short hours. That may make things quite comfortable for the NMC’s bureaucracy, because the organisation will know exactly how much money it will have, but it does nothing for people who are worried about where the next pay packet is going to come from. My hon. Friend is right to say that it is a real problem.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Anderson]

I am happy to say that, although I do not completely agree with my hon. Friend. A review would allow us to have a discussion and get people involved. If the Government are too involved, some people will worry whether the NMC will lose the independence of which it should be proud, if it is running properly. I have no problem in principle with the Government helping out in any way they can, because that is part and parcel of ensuring that nurses are able to do the job that we and the public want.

The fee increase was significant because nurses and midwives have been subjected to a Government-imposed pay freeze while, outside in the real world, everyday items and household bills are increasing dramatically. As we know, figures from the Labour party and others show that people are £1,600 a year worse off than they were five years ago. It is a double whammy, to put it mildly, for hard-working nurses and midwives to be told, “You are going to be worse off—and by the way, why don’t you pay more for your registration?”

In May 2014, the NMC consulted again on increasing the fee from £100 to £120, an increase of almost 60% in two years. The Government could have offered another bail-out to allow the NMC more time to address the challenges it faces from fitness-to-practise cases, but they chose not to. The proposed annual registration fee increase was heavily opposed by all the professional bodies and trade unions that represent the views of registrants. Ninety-nine per cent. of respondents to the Unison survey opposed the proposed increase to £120 a year. In the RCN survey, the same proportion of respondents disagreed with the proposed fee rise. The anger felt by registrants is demonstrated by the e-petition condemning the proposed fee increase, which was signed by almost 114,000 people. Their feelings are reasonable and understandable.

I will now address the NMC’s poor financial management, which was highlighted in the 2011 report. The fee increase was felt to be inappropriate because it placed too big a burden on individual nurses and midwives to make up for the NMC’s poor management. The £20 million grant from the Department of Health was meant to contribute to the cost of clearing the backlog of historical fitness-to-practise cases. Despite that help, some 50 cases have been outstanding for three years or longer. The issue was reinforced by the report, and 50 cases have been on the books for the three or four years since then. In 2009, the NMC had a relatively small number of such cases, and had it taken appropriate action at that stage, there would never have been the need to increase the registration fee to such a level.

The NMC’s consultation paper on registration fees recognised that the key driver of increasing costs is the massive increase in fitness-to-practise referrals. Since 2008, the number of fitness-to-practise referrals has increased by 133%. The NMC holds two and a half times as many hearings as all the other regulators combined. Last year, the NMC spent £55 million of its £71 million budget on fitness-to-practise issues, which means that 77% of its budget is spent on fewer than 1% of registrants. In comparison, the General Medical Council, which my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield mentioned, spent only 56% of its resources on fitness-to-practise cases involving registered doctors in 2013-14. The people who helped me to secure this debate support my contention that the NMC model is unsustainable and detrimental to the majority of registrants.

Employers are the largest group making fitness-to-practise referrals. In 2012-13, however, 40% of fitness-to-practise referrals were closed during the initial assessment. Employers were making referrals that were not fit to be heard but that had to be heard, and the cost of those hearings comes directly out of the purses and wallets of nurses and midwives. It has been suggested to me that, following the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust public inquiry, employers have become increasingly risk- averse and are using the fitness-to-practise referral process instead of internal processes and procedures to address performance and disciplinary issues. Instead of taking cases on themselves, employers are referring them to the NMC at unsustainable cost.

Inappropriate referrals block the system and add to costs, which is why it is important that the NMC assesses whether it is appropriate for employers to refer so many cases. The NMC could do that by including employers in reviewing the reasons for the dramatic increase in referrals since 2008. Is there a crisis? Is there a problem? Is there something wrong with the practice? If employers sit around the table with the NMC, perhaps they will get to the bottom of the situation.

The NMC should also take a more proactive approach to the promotion of education and standards as part of a preventive measure that could contribute to reducing the number of fitness-to-practise cases referred to the regulator. There should be an equally strong commitment to public protection, because that will prevent harm in the first place.

I have a quote from a full-time officer from Unison about his experience in dealing with NMC cases:

“The NMC pursue allegations against registrants that have little or nothing to do with patient safety and could not be said to have a public interest element. Despite the recommendations of the Law Commission review and its apparent endorsement by the NMC and the Department of Health, the NMC continues to bring cases relating solely to inter-employee and other issues wholly unrelated to their nursing practice. In addition the NMC insists on taking any cases with an apparent ‘public interest’ to a full hearing or meeting even where the registrant wishes to be voluntarily removed from the register. The lack of any clear definition of what is meant by the public interest makes the issue wholly subjective.

At a recent NMC hearing an NMC panel decided that a registrant’s apparent failure to approve staff applications for flexible working amounted to serious professional misconduct and was a public interest issue! This hearing lasted 10 days and probably cost well in excess of £30,000. It is absurd that nurses and midwives should be asked to foot the bill for such folly with ever increasing registration fees.”

That is the experience on the front line—that is what people are paying £120 a year for.

In an attempt to convey the affordability of the proposed fee increases, the NMC consultation paper compared subscription fees for professional bodies and those of trade unions with the NMC. However, that is not valid comparison. Unlike the NMC, trade unions and professional bodies are organisations that nurses and midwives can join voluntarily.

I would be delighted if the Government said that we could have a closed shop for trade unions and professional bodies. I am sure that you would agree, Mr Havard, but I have got a feeling that they may not be keen. Come 8 May, the next Government will be led by that wonderful gentleman, my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), but I have a feeling that he also might not be too keen on closed shops in the health service or anywhere else. However, that is what we have got with the NMC.

I understand why that is the way it is, but for the NMC to pretend that, somehow, a comparison can be made with joining trade unions is completely unfair. It would be much more suitable to compare the NMC’s registration fees with Health and Care Professions Council registration fees. Under “Agenda for Change”, both regulate professionals in similar pay bands, but when we compare a nurse at the top of band 5 with an occupational therapist on the same band, we see that the nurse would pay £120 a year in registration fees while the OT would spend £80. That goes back to the point raised earlier about why on earth part-time workers and those on different bands should pay the same subscriptions.

Although the NMC recognised the economic difficulties nurses and midwives face in its consultation paper, it proposed the fee increase regardless. Effectively, it ignored the reality of how those people are struggling.

[Ann McKechin]

I was astonished to find that the NMC has not instigated any efficiency programme to try to control costs and those of tribunal hearings in particular—even things such as booking hotels and accommodation for tribunal members—to try to ensure the most efficient cost basis, given current restrictions. Does my hon. Friend agree that, given that the NMC has a captive audience, it needs to spend more time showing that it is getting maximum efficiency for its costs?

[Mr Anderson]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point, which again comes back to what the review can look into: whether members are getting value for money. That is what we are talking about here. The NMC might think, “If we need more money, we can get it because they have got no option other than to pay.” It can hold people to ransom and, unfortunately, that is what it is surely doing. That is clear, because it has ignored the legitimate claims of those who have said, “Please, give us some relief here.” It appears that those people were told, “We’re going to ignore you, anyway.”

During a time of continued pay restraint for hard-working nurses and midwives and ever-increasing costs of essentials such as child care, household bills and everyday items, the proposed fee increase left many registrants feeling that that was yet another attack on their standard of living.