Regional Pay (NHS)

Geoffrey Cox Excerpts

Wednesday 7th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Geoffrey Cox (Torridge and West Devon) (Con)]

It is never pleasant not to be in complete concurrence and happy harmony with one’s own Front Bench, but I hope the Minister will not ignore the fact that, despite voicing concern about the Government’s position, I strongly deplore the Labour party’s behaviour in taking a position that can only be described as cynically opportunistic. It is simply untenable for the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) to contend that he can, like Pontius Pilot, take his hands off the situation and wash them clean of what is going on in the NHS in the south-west today.

It is precisely the implementation of the freedoms granted under the right hon. Gentleman’s stewardship that these consortia are operating. He is in exactly the same position as the householder who opens the door to the burglar, and then complains when he walks in and burgles the property. He opened the door with his changes. It was his policy that introduced flexibilities, and to suggest that he was blind to the probability that trusts would exploit it by introducing differentials in pay up and down the length of the country is not merely naive but wilful irresponsibility and will be judged by people listening to this debate. The people in the low-wage areas I have the honour and privilege to represent will not be fooled by the Labour party’s position.

On the other hand, it is perfectly fair to say that the introduction of regional pay in the NHS would be a retrograde and wrong step. The fact is that low-wage areas, such as those I represent, are already suffering: 26% of families and homes in Torridge are on the edge of poverty. Only two constituencies in Cornwall, an area that receives special help in the form of objective 1 money from the EU, are in a worse position than those in Torridge and West Devon.

[Andrew George]

I represent one of those constituencies. In view of the hon. and learned Gentleman’s comments about the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) and his criticism of regional pay—a stand I entirely agree with—would he acknowledge that the Conservatives voted in favour of the legislation that brought in foundation trusts and flexibilities, and does he regret that? I recognise, of course, that he was not in the House at the time.

[Mr Cox]

I do not believe that any party can take its hands off and claim to be not responsible for measures that allowed trusts to exploit the ability to drive down pay by forming such consortia. The Labour party cannot disavow responsibility, and neither, if it voted for it, can the Conservative party.

I want to say something about regional pay. I hope and I am sure that the Minister is listening. I have already written to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. In areas such as Torridge and West Devon—areas that depend on public sector pay to create the spending and buying power that puts at least some life into its economy—the concept that pay could be even lower than it is now is unconscionable and inconceivable to those of us who represent them. I hope that the Government will think again in this review. I am comforted by the Secretary of State’s words when he says that they are committed to national pay scales. I hope that those words can be counted on.

I, for one, could not support a measure that introduced regional pay as formal NHS policy, unless I was satisfied that there were sufficient safeguards for the low-wage areas I represent. People often associate rural areas such as Torridge and West Devon with prosperity, but that is a grossly inaccurate caricature. In Torridge, 26% of households are on the edge of poverty, wages are in the bottom 5% of all areas in the country, and West Devon is not far behind. It is simply inconceivable for me, as its representative, to agree to a proposition that would further depress incomes in those areas.

Having said that, it is clear that the NHS has to do something about the pay bill, which is 70% of its budget, and the only appropriate way of dealing with it is for the unions and all parties, including all political parties, to tackle it at a national level. I am disturbed that those national negotiations are apparently not taking place. I hope that the right hon. Member for Leigh will encourage the unions to take part in those discussions, because we all have to accept that there is a major national problem with the burden of the NHS pay bill.

[Mr Bradshaw]

Those discussions are taking place. Does the hon. and learned Gentleman think that a parallel process, as undertaken by the south-west cartel, is helping or hindering a successful outcome of the national negotiations?

[Mr Cox]

To be blunt, I am not happy about what I am seeing in the south-west in relation to those 20 trusts, whom I encourage to engage with staff and the unions, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson) said, and to engage in a process that tries to reach some form of consensual agreement.

To answer the right hon. Gentleman’s question, however, I suspect that those 20 trusts have joined together only out of desperation at the static and stagnating nature of the discussions at national level. They are desperate to manage their budgets. Many are in extremely difficult financial circumstances. I see my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Sir Nick Harvey) in the Chamber. I will be meeting the chief executive of Northern Devon health trust shortly, and I know the budgetary pressures that it is facing. He will tell me that it cannot wait for the slow convoy of the national negotiations to take place. I urge it to do so. I hope that we can re-engage at a national level and that there are serious and mature discussions going forward. The truth is—nobody can doubt it—that the pay bill in the national health service needs to be tackled. That is why I say again to the right hon. Member for Leigh that the position adopted by the party he represents is not responsible. What he should be doing is calling for national negotiations to take place as swiftly as possible.

[Andy Burnham]

But all the evidence says that a national pay system is more cost-effective because it does not lead to inflationary pressure around the system, so ours is not an irresponsible position. The hon. and learned Gentleman began with a very trenchant criticism of the foundation trust legislation, which has been echoed on the Liberal Democrat Benches. At the same time as that legislation was enacted, Labour was bringing forward the most ambitious ever programme to overhaul national pay in the NHS, called “Agenda for Change”. He needs to give us some credit for doing that.

[Mr Cox]

I hope I have been as balanced and fair as I can. I am not suggesting that the right hon. Gentleman has been stewarding the national health service while trusts have taken these actions; I am saying that, like the householder, he opened the door to the burglar. He cannot say now, when he has opened the door, that he deplores the fact that the burglar has gone in and robbed the property. The truth is that he presided over it when he opened the door, and he must have known that that would happen.

There are two things that the Labour party should do now. If the right hon. Gentleman left aside parliamentary games, which we all know he has engaged in, he could offer to try to tackle these grave problems at a national level by encouraging the unions to engage. He should not seek to exploit the situation by scoring political points in the way that he currently is. I say to him and to Ministers on my Front Bench that I very much hope that the outcome of the review will not be that regional pay is recommended as the way forward. I would oppose it. I cannot in conscience sit in this House, representing thousands of people on the edge of poverty in a rural economy that is sustained largely by expenditure that those on public sector salaries in the national health service receive, and preside over a situation where their incomes are further depressed.