NHS Pay

James Heappey Excerpts

Wednesday 13th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)]

rose—

[James Heappey (Wells) (Con)]

rose—

[Jonathan Ashworth]

I will make a little progress now, if I may. I promise I will take more interventions later.

I say directly to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, who will be responding to the debate later, that if Ministers are given flexibility to set pay rates, and if the pay cap has indeed been abandoned, she also needs to grant the NHS the funding that it needs. The NHS is underfunded and it is going through the biggest financial squeeze in its history. On the published figures, head-for-head NHS spending will fall in the next year. Hospitals are in deficit, waiting lists are at 4 million, the A&E target is never met and the 18-week target has been abandoned. Hospital bosses are warning that there will not be enough beds this winter. Last winter, hospitals were overcrowded, ambulances were backed up and social care was at a tipping point. Some even characterised it as a humanitarian crisis. It is not good enough for the Chief Secretary to the Treasury just to grant “flexibility” and expect hospitals to fund a staff pay increase from existing budgets.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Ashworth]

The Chief Secretary says it is not true. These amounts are based on her own Treasury figures.

[James Heappey]

The shadow Minister has been very generous in giving way. May I be helpful and invite him perhaps to revise his earlier statement that the pay rise should be universal across the public sector? Surely that would advantage those in more senior, management positions, who would disproportionately benefit from such a pay rise, and perhaps actually the Government’s position of offering Ministers flexibility to increase pay where there is a clear need is a much better proposal than the universal pay rise that would only benefit fat cat managers.

[Jonathan Ashworth]

There we have it—the Conservative party playing one part of the public sector off against the other. We believe the whole of the public sector deserves a pay rise.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hunt]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about that. The whole problem with the tone of the argument made by the shadow Health Secretary is that he is saying that the difference between the Government and Labour is about our support for public sector workers, but we all agree, in all parts of the House, that they do a fantastic job. I see that in the NHS every week. The difference between us and Labour is about knowing what harms public sector workers the most; it is between ignoring and repeating the mistakes of the 2008 crash, as Labour Members are, and what we think, which is that we need to learn from those mistakes and not repeat them.

[James Heappey]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that Labour was not the only party with an irresponsible policy at the general election on funding health and social care, and that although the Liberal Democrats can muster only one MP to debate this important subject today, their 1p on income tax gimmick would have gone nowhere far enough to funding the properly increased services they promised?

[Mr Hunt]

I will allow the Liberal Democrats to speak for themselves, but suffice it to say that even one MP is quite a large proportion of the Liberal Democrat parliamentary party and we are grateful that it does have some representation here this afternoon.