Oral Answers to Questions

Lilian Greenwood Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Dr Poulter]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. It was the previous Government who, through the “Agenda for Change”, gave flexibility to NHS trusts to allow some employers to pay a 30% premium in areas with workplace shortages.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

17. At a time when NHS budgets are under exceptional pressure, my constituents simply do not understand why the Government are so intent on pushing trusts to divert money away from patient care and into wasteful local pay bargaining. Is there not a risk that Nottingham’s excellent NHS hospitals and community services will be unable to recruit and retain the best staff if regional pay results in cuts to their salary scales? The Government are supportive of the idea, endorsed by the previous Government, that local pay flexibility allows additional rewards to be paid to staff in areas with workplace shortages, as my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry) just made clear. The Government are supporting the unions, employers and employees, as the NHS Staff Council, in coming together to try to agree how we need to modify the “Agenda for Change” and other agreements to ensure that they remain fit for their purpose of protecting employees.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

13. What assessment his Department has made of the extent to which the cancer radiotherapy innovation fund will increase access to intensity-modulated radiotherapy.