Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Lord Kakkar Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 9th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kakkar (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 18 in the name of my noble friend Lord Patel. I remind noble Lords of my registered interests; in particular, that I am a practising clinician. The amendment, and my noble friend’s introduction to it, clearly lay out an important point about the consequences with regard to practice on non-strike days if a minimum level of staffing is defined for clinical areas on strike days. It is possible that, on non-strike days, staffing levels will fall below the minimum defined for a strike day. Under those circumstances, would it be appropriate for the healthcare organisation in question to continue to deliver service in that clinical area where the minimum service or staffing level defined for a strike day has been breached?

What would be the consequences for a clinician—a regulated healthcare professional—offering to work and participate in the delivery of clinical care in a clinical environment whose staffing would, on a strike day, be considered to have fallen below a safe level? What would be the consequence for a regulated healthcare organisation of continuing to promote the delivery of care, on a non-strike day, in an area that it would consider unsafe on a strike day if the staffing level were below that defined? For instance, what view have the professional and system regulators taken of this potential situation?

Would there then be a greater risk for potential litigation associated with the delivery of care in a clinical area that had failed to provide, on a non-strike day, staffing levels that were considered the minimum level to be provided on a strike day? Would that have a chilling effect on the capacity or willingness of clinicians and healthcare professionals to participate in the delivery of care under those circumstances? These are important issues that need to be explored in some detail to ensure that they are not unintended consequences of proceeding with an approach that secures patient safety on strike days but, unfortunately, fails to have determined that appropriate protection of patient safety on non-strike days.

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

My Lords, I support the amendment in the names of my noble friends Lord Patel and Lord Kakkar, and I agree with everything they said. I return to the issue of life and limb. We need to recognise that we have people in hospitals and care homes who, if they did not receive compassionate care, would be left in unclean beds, would not be fed and would not receive what we think of as ordinary, everyday care. Therefore, the whole issue of what minimum levels should be needs to be thought about really carefully. It needs to be thought about outside the opportunities of strikes and in terms of ordinary, everyday care.

I am worried that, without the amendment proposed, it is possible that we would have safer, or better, care on strike days than on non-strike days. I am also worried that, unless we tackle the workforce shortage, which has driven staff to their current level of discontent in health and care, we will continue to have problems. This is not just about people striking for an increase in salary; it is about people’s real concern about being unable to deliver the service they wish to deliver.