NHS Staff Pay

Debate between Gary Streeter and Jeremy Hunt

Wednesday 21st March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

First, I thank the hon. Lady for welcoming the deal. I think she is the first Labour Member who has done so, and it is not insignificant that she is a nurse. A wholly owned subsidiary is a legal structure that was made possible by a change in the law introduced in 2006, under her party’s Government, and is actually an alternative to outsourcing. Employees would be far more likely to benefit from “Agenda for Change” pay rates within such a structure than if they were outsourced, which the last Labour Government tried so hard to encourage.

[Mr Gary Streeter (South West Devon) (Con)]

When I met Devon’s secretary of the Royal College of Nursing recently to discuss nurses’ pay, she made the obvious point that she was getting a bit fed up with politicians saying that they valued nurses while not actually adding to their pay packets. Does my right hon. Friend agree that from today not only will we be saying that we value nurses, but that that will be reflected in their pay packets? I congratulate him and the RCN on achieving such a good deal.

[Mr Hunt]

I thank my hon. Friend for that, and I pay tribute to Janet Davies, the boss of the RCN, who has worked very hard to make this deal happen and in the best interests of her profession.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Gary Streeter and Jeremy Hunt

Tuesday 6th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gary Streeter (South West Devon) (Con)]

For the first time ever in Devon and Plymouth, GP practices are struggling to recruit new doctors and new partners in particular and are spending a fortune on locums as a result. The Government have a plan to fix the situation by 2020, but what more can be done in the meantime to ensure that my constituents can access primary care services?

[Mr Hunt]

There are two things. First, we have succeeded in increasing the number of medical school graduates who go into general practice—a record 3,157 this year. Secondly—I know this from my conversations with GPs in my hon. Friend’s constituency—we are doing what we can to reinvigorate the partnership model. Since meeting those GPs, I have agreed with the Royal College of General Practitioners and the BMA that we will carry out a formal review of how the partnership model needs to evolve in the modern NHS.

Junior Doctors Contracts

Debate between Gary Streeter and Jeremy Hunt

Monday 25th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

We are taking serious action to bring that deficit down. In particular, one thing we need to do to do that is to reduce the use of agency staff. That will help with the provision of more full-time staff in the NHS, which will be good for the junior doctor workforce.

[Mr Gary Streeter (South West Devon) (Con)]

I commend my right hon. Friend for the way he is conducting himself in this matter. Will he remind the House of when the BMA’s junior doctors negotiating committee first refused to meet him because it wanted to achieve a political outcome rather than a resolved settlement?

[Mr Hunt]

Regrettably, there has not been only one occasion. In the October before the election, the junior doctors committee walked out of talks after extensive efforts to negotiate a new contract. We then had the independent pay review body process. Then—this was the most shocking thing of all—we had the decision of the committee to ballot for strike action before it had even been prepared to sit down and talk to me about what the new contract involved. That has been at the heart of so many misunderstandings about this contract and has led to so much disappointment on all sides. If the committee had sat down and talked to us, it would have discovered that we all want the same thing: a safer, seven-day NHS.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Gary Streeter and Jeremy Hunt

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gary Streeter (South West Devon) (Con)]

T6. On any given day in the Derriford hospital in Plymouth, 75% of patients are over 65 years of age and rising. Does that not demonstrate the demographic pressures that face our acute hospitals, and what more can this Government do to ensure that people, especially elderly people, are treated in the community?

[Mr Jeremy Hunt]

We are doing a huge amount, but the first thing is to ensure that there is someone in the NHS who is accountable and responsible for all vulnerable older people outside hospital, because out-of-hospital care is where we need to have the big revolution. There will be a big change in April with named GPs for the over-75s. The integration of the health and social care systems is the next step. I hope that my hon. Friend will see real progress for his constituents.