Junior Doctors’ Contracts
Debate between Heidi Alexander and Emily Thornberry(9 years ago)
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Heidi Alexander
I do agree. I was talking about a seven-day NHS. A truly 24/7 NHS does not just mean consultants being more readily available; it means 24/7 access to diagnostic tests, social care, occupational therapists—the list goes on. If the Secretary of State has a magic pot of money to pay for all that, bearing it in mind that the NHS can barely pay for the work that it is currently doing, I am all ears. If his plan is to deliver seven-day services by spreading existing services more thinly, he should come clean and say so.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
My hon. Friend makes a very powerful speech. I bring her back to an earlier point which needs emphasising. At the moment trusts have to provide rosters that are not only fair but safe, so that junior doctors get time off. Now it seems that trusts will no longer have to pay attention to those rules and will no longer be fined if they do not follow them.
Heidi Alexander
There are very serious concerns about the proposed new contract, and my hon. Friend is right to highlight them.
The sad thing is that it did not have to be this way. Instead of using the dispute with junior doctors to suit his own political ends, the Health Secretary should have listened. He should have understood the depth and strength of concern before it got to the point where junior doctors feel as though they are the first line of defence in a fight for the future of the NHS. Instead of telling junior doctors that the BMA was misleading them, he should have respected their intelligence and responded to their concerns. At the very least, he should have heeded the words of the present Prime Minister, who said this about junior doctors when addressing a rally in 2007:
“There’s a simple truth at the heart of this: you came into the NHS not because you wanted to get rich or famous, but because you have a vocation about curing the ill, about serving your community.”
The Prime Minister went on to say in his conference speech a few days later:
“I will never forget walking on the streets of London marching with 10,000 junior doctors who felt like they were being treated like cogs in a machine rather than professionals with a vocation to go out and save lives”.
It is time the Health Secretary started treating junior doctors like the intelligent professionals they are. When I spoke at the junior doctors rally in London 10 days ago, I delivered a message for the Health Secretary. He was not working that Saturday so I repeat it for him now: stop the high-handed demands, show you are prepared to compromise and put patients before politics.
Housing (London)
Debate between Heidi Alexander and Emily Thornberry(10 years, 9 months ago)
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Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to participate in this debate, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) on securing it. I am afraid that I cannot stay for the whole debate because I am chairing a meeting at 10.30 am, so I will miss the contributions from the Minister and, sadly, from our Front-Bench spokeswoman, the hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds).
When I sat down yesterday to think about what I might say in this debate, I realised that I have made a similar speech in each of the years I have been a Member of Parliament. I make no apology for that, because the housing crisis in London has a direct impact on my constituents. For many of them, that impact is devastating for their lives and those of their families.
The housing crisis in London is of long standing, but I believe it has been made worse by the policies of the Tory-Liberal Government. If the crisis is not addressed, it will continue to cause misery and unhappiness for many. It will damage our economic competitiveness and place enormous strain on our already overstretched transport system, as the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Nadine Dorries) has said.
Some may think of London’s housing crisis as a problem that affects only certain people—perhaps those on a particular income or of a particular age—but nothing could be further from the truth. With rocketing house prices and sky-high rents, London’s housing crisis is as much about the young professional couple in their 30s who are unable to buy their first home as about the family of five who rent an overcrowded flat from a slum landlord. The housing crisis is as much about the nurse or the firefighter who cannot afford a shared ownership property as it is about the rough sleeper who can find shelter only in a disused garage or on a bench in a railway station.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
The issue affects all of us across London. I do not know whether I have yet shared with my hon. Friend the story of a firefighter and a midwife whom I met, who lived in overcrowded conditions and wanted to part-buy. When I looked into where they might get a part-ownership property, I realised that the only place they could afford to buy was somewhere out near Redbridge, and only after she had qualified as a midwife. Affordable housing in central London is social housing, in my view. Does my hon. Friend agree?
Heidi Alexander
I do. In my experience, it is especially difficult for people with families who are trying to buy a two or three-bedroom shared-ownership property. They have to be earning in the region of £40,000 a year before they can access such properties.