NHS Pay

Kwasi Kwarteng Excerpts

Wednesday 13th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng (Spelthorne) (Con)]

It is a great honour to have been called in this serious debate. I am pleased by the way in which it has been conducted, as we have heard some very good speeches, in particular the maiden speech by the hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Stephen Morgan). It was an amusing, entertaining, heartfelt and serious speech, and I have no doubt that the hon. Gentleman will make valuable contributions in this Parliament and in years to come. It was a salutary speech because it gave one faith in the House of Commons.

Having been a Member for seven years, I have seen many debates—and some yah-boo politics—in which people apportioned blame for the crisis. Labour says that the Tories cut too much and that it was all the bankers’ fault that we had a deficit of £160 billion—the largest peace-time deficit in our history. The right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), who was a Front-Bench member of the coalition Government for their full five years, will remember clearly the context in which we came up with the difficult policy of the pay cap. It was not a whimsy, and we did not do it for the hell of it to put people under pressure. The pay cap was a serious response to a difficult and chronic problem—the deficit.

I do not want to apportion blame, and I echo my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State in recognising that the global crash was not entirely Labour’s fault—I am willing to give it that—but the history of the public finances from 2001, eight years before the financial crisis happened, shows that we ran a deficit in every single one of those years. To borrow a phrase—a mantra—from a departed colleague, Labour did not fix the roof while the sun was shining. The Labour party had a record of fiscal incompetence, and it was against that backdrop that public sector pay restraint became an issue. It is important to look at the history to explain why the pay cap was instituted in 2011.

[Eleanor Smith]

The hon. Gentleman talks about eight years, but Andrew Lansley’s Bill basically destroyed the NHS. That is why we are in this state with the pay cap. I think the hon. Gentleman has forgotten about that.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

I would like to allow the hon. Lady to speak early on, and there is nothing wrong with intervening, but we do need short interventions. That would be great. I need to know if Members will be giving way, too. I would like to get all speakers in, but the more interventions we have the less chance there is that I will be able to do that.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

That was a fair intervention, but I completely disagree with the hon. Lady’s point. The deficit had nothing to do with the then Secretary of State for Health. It was not the previous Secretary of State for Health who caused the £160 billion deficit the Government inherited in 2010. Naturally, when running a huge deficit—I think it was something like 12% of GDP—one has to find savings in the budget. The question I pose to Labour Members is, how would they find the extra money? There are only two ways to do that: the Government can either raise the money through taxation, or the Chancellor has to borrow the money. It is very unclear to me what the Labour party proposes to do to increase the pay of public sector workers. No doubt it will have a plan to increase it by 5% or 10%—I do not know by exactly how much it wants to put up public sector pay—but it would have to fund that. I looked at the Labour election manifesto and I think it spent the tax on people earning over £80,000 about 10 times over to fund their various projects and policies.

We cannot go on kidding ourselves and kidding the British people. I very much like the point made by the right hon. Member for North Norfolk about the fact that we have to be serious about how we are going to fund the NHS and social care provision. He described the current model as—his word—unsustainable. I do not share that view—I think we can fund the NHS adequately for the rest of the Parliament—but his general message was right. It does not make any sense for Labour Members to scream, holler and shout about Tory cuts without having a serious proposal.

[Norman Lamb]

To work together in a constructive, rational and mature way requires the Government to agree to do it. We are still waiting. I met the Prime Minister in February. Please make a decision.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I am not privy to the conversations the right hon. Gentleman has had with the Prime Minister—that is something he might wish to take up with her—but this is a serious debate. As he said, we cannot be honest with people on this issue if we are simply screaming and shouting across the Dispatch Box.

Conservative and Opposition Members have made the point that we have extremely impressive professionals across the public services. The level of public service provision here in Britain is right at the top of the global rankings. I have spent time in Europe, Africa and across the middle east. The public services we have in Britain are really world class and we must never lose sight of that in these discussions. The nature of the debate has been very fruitful and we have had a measure of courtesy, but it does not make sense simply to holler “Tory cuts.” That is what I have heard in seven years of trying to address what are very serious problems.