Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Hugh Bayley and Dan Rogerson

Thursday 17th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Dan Rogerson]

Ministers have undertaken a great number of visits across the country and I would be happy to join my hon. Friend in a visit to her constituency. She is right to point out that we are experiencing some hot weather, which brings its own challenges, but we also have the threat of storms over the weekend, so we are keeping a close eye on what might result from them.

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

I thank the previous Secretary of State who, in his last few days in office, confirmed to me in writing that the Department will in future publish statistics on flood protection expenditure as official statistics. Will the Minister inform the House when that change will take place and whether, crucially, it will be before the next election, so that we can have clear figures?

[Dan Rogerson]

I am delighted that my right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson) was able to write to the hon. Gentleman to reassure him about that approach and I am pleased with the welcome that the hon. Gentleman has given it. We have debated the matter on many occasions. We will now discuss how that change will come in and will introduce it as soon as we possibly can.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Hugh Bayley and Dan Rogerson

Thursday 12th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

9. What recent discussions his Department has had with the UK Statistics Authority on the publication of official statistics of figures on Government spending on flood protection.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Dan Rogerson)]

Positive discussions have been held with the UK Statistics Authority about the publication of flood protection expenditure. We are in the final stages of firming up proposals, after which we will write to the hon. Gentleman giving the details. The robustness of the figures is already assured by our strict finance processes, and we will provide additional context for the benefit of a full range of users.

[Hugh Bayley]

I remind the House that in February the head of the UK Statistics Authority wrote to me saying that the figures published by DEFRA on flood protection spending were unreliable, and expressing a preference for figures published in future to be quality-controlled by his department as official statistics. I think that that would do a great deal to restore public confidence that the Government are spending what is needed on flood protection. Can the Minister assure me that the Department will agree to do that, and will he make a public announcement before the summer recess?

[Dan Rogerson]

I know that the hon. Gentleman has a long-standing interest in this matter, and that he has met my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to discuss it. He will doubtless be reassured to know that we are investing more in flood defences than the last Government. However, it is right for us to ensure that those figures are in the public domain. In his letter, the chair of the UKSA said that he broadly agreed with the statistics, but that they were not currently available for his assessment and he would need to look at them. We are discussing with the UKSA what it is best to do, and as I have said, we will write to the hon. Gentleman when the process is complete.

Flooding

Debate between Hugh Bayley and Dan Rogerson

Wednesday 26th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Dan Rogerson)]

I thank the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) for the spirit in which he closed the debate, and his reflective and thoughtful approach. I thank hon. Members for setting out how their constituents, or people near to them, have been affected. It is a devastating experience to go through flooding. I know that all of us in this House send our sympathies to all those who have been affected, whether in their homes or businesses or their communities more broadly. Once again, I should like to thank on the Floor of the House the many people who have worked tirelessly in response to these recent events, including staff of the fire, ambulance, police and other rescue services, local authorities, the Environment Agency in particular, the voluntary sector and local communities—neighbours who have helped each other.

As we have heard, we have had extreme events since early December with the east coast tidal surge. We experienced flooding over Christmas and it has been the wettest January since 1766 in England and Wales. Central and south-east England have received over 250% of their average rainfall. Recently, flooding has been confined mostly to the Thames valley, Wiltshire and the Somerset levels, with this last, in particular, seeing unprecedented water levels. Groundwater levels remain high across many southern counties. We need to remain vigilant to ensure that communities are protected, because that groundwater will take some time to recede.

Climate change is referred to in the motion and was mentioned by the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) in her opening remarks. While it is not yet possible to attribute a single instance of extreme weather to climate change, the recent winter storminess is in line with what we expect to see under climate change scenarios. We expect an increase in the frequency and severity of these types of weather events. The UK’s first climate change risk assessment, published in 2012, assessed this trend and informed the report on the national adaptation programme that we published last year. This sets out a wide range of actions by Government, business, councils and civil society to address the most significant climate risks we face as a country.

Severe damage has affected our infrastructure—the railway at Dawlish, famously, but we have also seen roads cut off and communities swept away. There will be costs that we need to assess, along with local authorities, to ensure that things can be brought back to the condition that local communities need.

The response has been, and continues to be, a magnificent effort. In the face of such unprecedented weather, countless people and organisations have worked together around the clock to help those affected. The level of response, and the spirit of it, has been staggering. I appreciate how hard everyone has been working and just how hard it is for the people whose homes and businesses have been affected. All levels of Government and the emergency services are fully engaged in dealing with the floods and extreme weather. It has been particularly gratifying to hear Members talk about how that has been put into practice on the ground locally and how people have learnt the lessons of the past to work together on this.

Protecting our communities against flooding is a high priority for this Government. Existing defences and improvements to the way in which we respond to incidents meant that we were able to protect 1.3 million properties from flooding since December—over 270,000 in the latest flood event. During this Parliament the Government are spending more in cash terms—in real terms—than ever before. The Government are spending £2.4 billion on flood defence over the period 2010-14, compared with £2.2 billion in the previous four-year period.

[Hugh Bayley]

rose—

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Hugh Bayley and Dan Rogerson

Thursday 9th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Dan Rogerson]

I am happy to confirm that there is a proposal for the exemption of small businesses. DEFRA’s call for evidence in relation to a charge on single-use plastic bags closed on 20 December, and the results are now being analysed. The Government recognise that there is a significant debate about acceptable levels of contamination from biodegradable plastics in the recycling stream, and have therefore called on industry to develop new ways of separating plastic bags from the waste stream. Two companies have been awarded contracts for the research, and will complete their feasibility studies by April.

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

T7. Will the Secretary of State clarify his earlier statement about an increase in his Department’s funding for flood protection? During the second half of last year, the hon. Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon), who was then a DEFRA Minister, told me in a written parliamentary answer that in the year in which his party came to power, the Department spent £646 million. Spending in the current year is £113 million less, at £533 million. Did the Secretary of State’s earlier statement mean that the Government have now increased funding for flood protection in this and future years, and does that mean that he can now abandon the proposals to cut 1,700 jobs at the Environment Agency?

Regional Pay (NHS)

Debate between Hugh Bayley and Dan Rogerson

Wednesday 7th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

It would be a good thing, when debating the future of the health service, to talk a little more about the work done by health service professionals. If a woman has breast cancer and consults the oncologist, and he is working out what the best chemotherapy would be, she would want him to be as well qualified and skilled whether he lived in Plymouth or in a part of the country where wage levels were higher. She would expect her doctor to be as well remunerated. Exactly the same would apply for a nurse planning a care and rehabilitation regime for an elderly stroke victim. A number of colleagues made the point that a nurse in Plymouth should get the same rate of pay as a nurse in the City of London. The reason why they should receive the same rate of pay is that we, as their patients, want the same level of care, the same level of service and the same likelihood of survival if we have an illness.

My remarks are based on my experience before I joined the House. We heard a number of Conservative Members trashing the trade unions. I spent seven years as a full-time trade union official for the National and Local Government Officers Association, now part of Unison, negotiating pay and conditions in the national pay bodies for nurses, midwives, ambulance officers, and administrative and clerical staff. I put the interests of the health service and patients very high on my agenda when I did that job. I spent a number of years as a health economist, working at the university of York, advising health authorities and trusts on how best to use their budgets. I spent time as a member of York health authority—they were called health authorities in those days—which would now be the equivalent of being a non-executive member of a trust board. Before the debate, I consulted senior NHS managers, finance directors, chief executives, a trust chair, and Professor Alan Maynard, a professor of health economics who was an adviser to the Health Committee, and my remarks reflect what they told me.

I can tell hon. Members from real experience that negotiating pay and conditions is a slow, painful and labour-intensive task. There is an opportunity cost. If health service managers spend time determining pay on a regional or local basis, that removes them from focusing on something else—driving up productivity, improving care outcomes or developing new prevention services, perhaps. There is a cost if more effort is put into regional pay negotiations, because less is done on something else. Regional pay would divert hundreds of managers from thousands of hours of managing the health service into doing something that they currently do not need to do. The Labour Government permitted a measure of local flexibility, but we specifically did not go for the introduction of regional pay.

[Dan Rogerson]

The other approach that, unfortunately, the consortium seems to have taken is putting aside money and employing consultants to come up with a model for it. That has the potential to be even worse than the approach the hon. Gentleman describes.

[Hugh Bayley]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for enhancing my argument. As has been pointed out, the limited flexibility that was introduced by the Labour Government has been used by only one hospital to date, Southend, and in that case it was to raise, not reduce, pay.

Abandoning a national pay framework for the NHS is likely to be inflationary for NHS pay. Let us start with doctors. We know from experience that doctors are tough negotiators—[Interruption.] I can see the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter) smiling. When GPs were negotiating with the previous Labour Government about the cost of the change in out-of-hours services, they—let us be blunt about it—did extremely well out of the agreement. Why did they do well? Because they have immeasurably high leverage. If they were to withhold their services, in whole or in part, from patients, the consequences would be dramatic.

If we had regional pay, the charge would be led by groups, such as doctors, in the highest-cost areas such as London, and they would be in a position to leverage large increases in pay. What would then happen? Doctors would inevitably be drawn away from areas of the country where they are paid 20% or 30% less. What would happen in an area such as mine, which would lose doctors to high-cost areas in London and the south-east of England? Of course, my area would have to raise pay to attract people back. There would be a general pressure, raising wage costs across the NHS, not just in the medical profession, but in other health professions too.

If the Department of Health loses control of pay in the NHS, which accounts for 70% or 75% of its budget, it would blow the Nicholson challenge straight out of the water. The Government have set the NHS the challenge of finding £20 billion of efficiency savings. If regional pay is introduced, they have no prospect whatever of achieving that because of the inflationary pressures of the change that they are making. Fragmentation and liberalisation of pay regimes only reduce pay where there is a surplus of labour—where the employer has the economic power and the leverage.

The health professions are highly regulated, however, and the professionals are extremely skilled workers who train for a long time, which makes it an inflexible labour market, and that gives health professionals immense bargaining power—a power that, as we know from experience, is used. If the Government really want a levelling down of pay in the NHS, they should train more doctors, nurses, physiotherapists and radiographers, so that there are 10% more than we need, which would have two advantages: first, the NHS could get rid of poor performers, and secondly, there would not be the same inflationary pressure on pay.

If we had regional pay variations, there would be an impact on quality of care in those regions that paid less, because the best clinicians would go to the best jobs paying higher salaries in high-cost areas. It would inevitably divert resources from poorer regions of the country to richer regions, which would fly in the face of the “No Stone Unturned” plan for growth produced for the Government by Lord Heseltine.

I want to respond briefly to the Secretary of State’s statement that under this Government spending on the NHS has increased in real terms. If he or other Members were to consult Her Majesty’s Treasury’s public expenditure statistical analyses of 2012, in table 1.8 they would find that expenditure on the NHS in 2009-10—the last year of the last Labour Government—at 2011-12 prices was £105.1 billion. In 2011-12—the first year of the coalition Government—it fell to £104.4 billion, and last year to £104.3 billion. That is a real-terms reduction in expenditure on the NHS. In comparison, under the Labour Government, we had on average a 6.2% increase each year. That shows why the NHS is in such a parlous financial position now.