NHS Pay

Debate between Jonathan Ashworth and Lucy Frazer

Wednesday 13th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[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.

[Lucy Frazer (South East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

If the hon. Gentleman does not get the increases he would like, will he support co-ordinated illegal action?

[Jonathan Ashworth]

The Labour party supports people taking legal industrial action, and if the hon. Lady supports public sector workers, she should be joining us in the Division Lobby later.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Ashworth]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady and I am grateful that she also signed the early-day motion. This issue may be debated further as hon. Members make their speeches today.

As we know, according to the Office for National Statistics, many public sector workers regularly work an average of 7.8 hours’ unpaid overtime a week, worth £11 billion to the economy. With the pay cap, the Government have effectively been asking them to do more and more on less and less. That is unfair.

[Lucy Frazer]

rose—

[Jonathan Ashworth]

I will make progress, if I may.

MPs on both sides of the House have spoken out against this pay cap. We would hope that they will join us in the Division Lobby, including the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley). I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens North for tabling early-day motion 132, which calls for an end to the NHS pay cap, and which we have picked up and adopted as our motion today.

I know there are many who have sympathy for getting rid of the pay cap. The reason that many in the House have sympathy for getting rid of the pay cap is that in all our constituencies we have met nurses, very directly at our advice surgeries, or indeed in lobbies at Parliament, who have told us that the cap has meant they have seen a 40% real-terms drop in their earnings since 2011.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Ashworth]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Tories have been running the NHS for seven years now. It is going through the biggest financial squeeze in its history and we have some of the worst waiting times on record.

The hon. Member for Croydon South should note that the NHS Pay Review Body’s March report said that

“public sector pay policy is coming under stress. There are significant supply shortages in a number of staff groups and geographical areas. There are widespread concerns about recruitment, retention and motivation that are shared by employers and staff side alike.”

Again, NHS Providers said that

“seven years of NHS pay restraint is now preventing them from recruiting and retaining the staff they need to provide safe, high-quality patient care. The NHS can’t carry on failing to reflect the contribution of our staff through fair and competitive pay for five more years.”

We agree. Addressing NHS pay and lifting the pay cap are crucial to addressing the retention and recruitment crisis now facing the NHS.

[Lucy Frazer]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Jonathan Ashworth]

I have given way to the hon. Lady once and I have been generous, so I hope she will forgive me if I do not give way again.

We have heard several examples of what vacancies in the NHS mean for services. We have heard about the walk-in centre in Wirral, but Macmillan Cancer Support warned last week that bigger workloads and vacancies in key roles are creating “unrelenting pressure” on the cancer care workforce and that some cancer patients are attending A&E because they cannot get help elsewhere. I have mentioned midwifery, and this summer we revealed that almost half of maternity units closed their doors to patients at some point in 2016, with understaffing often used as the justification. Earlier this year, I revealed FOI requests that showed a rising number of cancelled children’s operations, with 38% of trusts citing workforce shortages as the reason for those cancelled operations. Visit any hospital and doctors will talk about rota gaps, and the latest NHS staff survey reveals that 47% of staff view current staffing levels as insufficient to allow them to do their job properly.

Not only is the pay cap unfair on hard-working staff who are struggling to make ends meet, but it is unfair on patients, who suffer the direct consequences of under-staffed, overstretched services. We look forward to the Health Secretary telling us how he will use his newfound flexibility. We look forward to his telling us what remit he will set for the NHS Pay Review Body in the coming days. He has had all summer to think through his response to these demands. I know that he got into a big argument with Professor Stephen Hawking, but we will leave that there. The Health Secretary sets the remit—he tells the pay review body what it is able to provide—so we look to him to tell us what he is going to ask it to provide. We want him to tell us today when he will publish the remit letter.

NHS and Social Care Funding

Debate between Jonathan Ashworth and Lucy Frazer

Wednesday 11th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Ashworth]

I thank my hon. Friend for correcting the record about that debate in Westminster Hall.

The Secretary of State denies that he is going to water down the A&E target; we welcome that, but we will watch carefully to ensure that he does not sneakily water it down throughout the remaining years of the Parliament. Will he tell us what he expects to happen next as we go through the winter? Weather warnings have been issued, and we could be heading for a cold snap. Will he update us on what urgent preparations he is putting in place to ensure that the NHS can cope? Is the NHS prepared for a flu outbreak, and what is his assessment of whether overstretched hospitals will be able to cope if there is one? It appears that, so far, Ministers have been burying their heads in the sand, but that will no longer do.

[Lucy Frazer (South East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) and my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield) both made the point that the issues in the NHS are historical. On Radio 4 this morning the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) said he accepted that the previous Labour Government had not spent the right amount of money on social care. Will the hon. Gentleman accept that these issues are historical—they are not new—and that Labour does not have all the answers?

[Jonathan Ashworth]

The hon. Lady refers to history; under this Government the NHS is going through the largest financial squeeze in its history. When we had a Labour Government, we more than doubled investment into the NHS.