Regional Pay (NHS)

Debate between Ian Mearns and John Pugh

Wednesday 7th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

The submission made by 25 of my colleagues to the regional pay consortium—copies are still available, if people want them—has an excellent conclusion:

“Richard Disney, an expert on regional pay at Nottingham University, has said, ‘everyone thinks it’”—

regional pay—

“‘makes sense until they try to work it out.’ The Government is no different.”

Let us be brutal: this debate is not just about regional pay, but about a set of hospitals that are desperate to save money in any way they can by cutting their wage bill and that are stupid enough to think that how they treat their staff and human capital simply does not matter. This debate is not even just about getting the Government to intervene; it is also about exposing differences between the coalition parties and about the coalition trying, to an extent, to paper over the cracks, which is what the amendment endeavours to do.

We all know that the Secretary of State does not want to intervene and that he will wait, quite legitimately, for the pay reviews to report. He cannot do that much anyway, because the guys on the Opposition Benches created independent foundation trusts—they were conned into agreeing to them in 2003, I think—which has resulted in the current situation.

To be fair, some people believe that regional pay will revive economies in the regions, that pumping extra money into areas with high housing costs will not drive up house prices still further, that it will not reduce demand in the regions and that it is a great way of ensuring that everyone gets good quality public services. They are the sort of people who believe that it will allow us to create not only more private sector jobs, but more public sector jobs. That view was expressed by the hon. Member for Norwich North (Miss Smith) when we last debated this issue.

[Ian Mearns]

Would the hon. Gentleman care to speculate on how the quality of front-line care for our patients will improve by threatening tens of thousands of hospital workers and NHS front-line staff with a further reduction in their living standards?

[John Pugh]

Some proponents of regional pay argue that teachers would work harder, nurses would be more caring and skills shortages would disappear, and that we would not squander useless time on endless boundary, demarcation and wage disputes. Bizarrely, however, those same people usually believe that this principle and its effects are applicable only to lower paid jobs, not to the top jobs. In other words, the proposal applies only to the plebs.

A prejudiced northerner such as me might be tempted to call those people, “southerners,” but the truth is that they are only a tiny subset of southerners who are upwardly mobile, found in think-tanks, male and disproportionately London-based. Their arguments will change, but no evidence to the contrary will satisfy them, because they have a Tea party-like faith and simple creed that public services should and can be run as simple markets, that people respond only to financial incentives and, most preposterously of all, that nothing worthwhile is lost by turning our great public services into markets full of acquisitive agents. That is not so much market ideology as a form of market idolatry: an unreasoning faith in the omnipotence of idealised markets of the kind that we find only in economics textbooks. Regional pay—and market-facing pay—is part of that faith, and the principle of equal pay for equal work is not part of it. In all honesty, we have to say that we have such people in our midst, some of whom are in positions of power and influence, but equally we have many colleagues around us who have a better grip on reality and the complexities of life and who question such crackpot ideas as regional pay and where they might take us.

I pity the Minister, who is probably aware—I looked this up—that house prices, wages and the cost of living in his Suffolk constituency are very similar to those in many parts of the south-west. He certainly will not welcome telling hordes of his constituents that they are a tad overpaid.

Academies Bill [Lords]

Debate between Ian Mearns and John Pugh

Monday 19th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Dr Pugh]

The shadow Minister has the advantage of me. I do know that there are a number of studies of charter schools in the United States, and that some are for and some against. The meta-analysis is inconclusive. It does not show that charter schools necessarily produce the wholesale educational improvement that the Secretary of State mentioned in his contribution.

There is no evidence that schools with all their current freedoms—and the ordinary council school has much more freedom than it ever used to have—feel oppressed rather than supported by local authorities. However, as has been said several times today, there is ample evidence that they are sick to death of the bureaucratic overload imposed by the Department and Ministers. It is downright shoddy and unfair to suggest that schools can be released from the bullying and bossiness of central Government only if they break their relationship with the local authority. It is dishonest to suggest that academy status is about addressing underperformance, when it is those who overperform who are to be fast-tracked and those in the leafy suburbs who are most likely to apply.

[Ian Mearns]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, in regard to the other part of the coalition, the cat is out of the bag, in that some Conservative Members regard academy status as grant-maintained status reinvented, and as a sort of promised land towards which they have been working? Part of the underlying problem is that, with money for services such as special educational needs, and school improvements in particular, being dragged back from local education authorities, schools that are already regarded as outstanding and excellent will be taking from local authorities money that would otherwise be used to improve other schools, which there will no longer be the capacity to do.

[Dr Pugh]

To a certain extent, it seems to be a case of “to those that have, shall be given”. It is also highly unlikely that parents in the most deprived areas, where attainment is low, will have the skills, the capacity or the conviction to set up their own schools. Free schools will probably be created elsewhere, in areas that are already stocked with quite decent and reasonable schools.

Even if we can force ourselves to ignore the slim evidence and the implausibility of some of the arguments, we should not blind ourselves to the risks involved. Those risks have been mentioned here and in the other place. They include the risk of a two-tier education system—the word “apartheid” has been used—and the risk of knock-on consequences for other schools. A number of Members have also mentioned the risks to special educational needs and support services. I also invite Members to inspect the Bill’s treatment of charity law, which could create the risk of profiteering skewing schooling at some time in the future. There is also a risk of diminished public accountability for a public resource, and an enormous risk in the current circumstances, with the £150 billion deficit, that we might lose economies of scale and consequently spend more money to less effect. Furthermore, we might have to bear the huge capital cost of providing extra buildings while underusing the present buildings in an anarchic, unplanned education market.