Junior Doctors Contract

Marie Rimmer Excerpts

Monday 30th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I cannot provide my hon. Friend with that information this afternoon, because we do not yet know whether the strike will go ahead tomorrow, and how many operations will end up being cancelled in advance of it because of the late notice, but I am happy to get that information for him when we have an estimate.

[Marie Rimmer (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab)]

This junior doctors dispute is not just about pay. We are very fortunate to have such marvellous junior doctors. My concern, and I know that it is their concern, is about the change to the training of junior doctors in the proposed imposed contract, which will have such a negative impact on the research and development that makes our national health service the greatest in the world. Will you comment on the impact that the change in the contract will have on training and research? Will that be altered, and if not, will you please look at it again, because that is absolutely essential?

[Mr Speaker]

I will do neither of those things, but we will soon discover whether the Secretary of State wishes to do either.

Junior Doctors’ Contracts

Marie Rimmer Excerpts

Wednesday 28th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Marie Rimmer (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab)]

We have a very real problem in recruitment and retention in our national health service. Hospitals and general practices are forced to recruit doctors from overseas and highly expensive locum and agency staff. The British Medical Association has described the plans as unsafe and unfair. My postbag is full of letters from junior doctors in the past weeks. Many of them feel that they are already overworked and undervalued. The threat of the imposition of the new contract does nothing to make that feeling better and only compounds it.

One of my constituents, Elizabeth, was born in Whiston hospital, which is ranked the best hospital in the country—I am so proud of it. She has lived in St Helens her entire life and is now a junior doctor in the hospital where she was born, training to be a GP. Admirably, she wants to put something back in to her community, but she tells me her plans are at risk because the new proposals financially penalise those on maternity leave. She tells me that she will have an enforced pay cut of approximately 30%—I listened to what the Secretary of State said about that—which would leave her unable to pay her mortgage, which she carefully budgets for.

She would also be unable to pay for the compulsory exams needed to complete her training. Sadly, that means she would be forced to take her skills elsewhere. She went on to tell me that other countries, such as Australia, can offer a better quality of life compared with what the new proposals mean for her. Given the very real prospect that she might default on her mortgage, she would have no choice but to move abroad with her family. Applications for certification to practise abroad are soaring. These proposals will also impact unfairly on female junior doctors, 80% of whom are part-time trainers, as pay progression will be slower for them; we will lose even more doctors as a result.

I do not want to go back to the old days, when a junior doctor told me he fell asleep while with a patient—the patient had to wake him up. Another junior doctor was killed in a car crash on the way home after working for nearly 30 hours without a break. It cannot be proved that his working pattern was responsible, but nothing would convince his colleagues and family that that was not the case.

We cannot afford to lose the doctors we are training. Not one hospital in the north-west would be able to balance the books in the next financial year. The clinical commissioning groups are facing enormous financial challenges. Hospitals can only get the money from the tariff from the Government and the CCGs, and it is not there. We cannot pay consultants seven days a week if there is not the money in the CCGs.

NHS: Financial Performance

Marie Rimmer Excerpts

Monday 12th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Ben Gummer]

Conservative Members disagreed with my hon. Friend’s predecessor on many points, but he did great cross-party work with Members who were not of his political persuasion to find a good solution for urgent care in his area. I hope that we will follow that model on a larger scale across the country. If we can do that, there will be a much better resolution to the challenges facing the NHS. Patients and people want us to address those challenges without turning the whole thing into a political circus.

[Marie Rimmer (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab)]

I agree that the use of agency staff places a great cost on the national health service, and I am sure the Minister will accept that cutting the number of training places for nurses and doctors at the beginning of the previous Government will have had an impact on that. St Helens and Knowsley teaching hospital is currently recruiting in Spain because it cannot recruit here. Recruitment and retention are crucial, and more than 50% of doctors now apply to practise abroad. Does the Minister think it sensible to further punish trusts that are in financial deficit—there are many across the country—by reducing their quality pay if they do not balance the books this year?

[Ben Gummer]

The hon. Lady asks about nurse training places, and this year the number of places is consistent with the number in 2010. The key point is not just the number of nurses in training, which is determined by NHS providers, but the number of nurses in hospitals serving patients and the public. The number of nurses is currently at a record high thanks to this Government’s actions.

A&E Services

Marie Rimmer Excerpts

Wednesday 24th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Dr Whitford]

Before the movement of out-of-hours GP services under the banner of NHS 24, most local areas had a doctors-on-call service. In my county, we had Ayrshire doctors on call, which was provided by local doctors at rooms in the A&E departments in our two hospitals. Patients quickly learned where they could go to be seen quickly. We also had a car service that allowed us to make home visits. That functioned very well until NHS 24 came and pulled it away.

We have to get back to local GPs working like that as part of a co-operative in a focal position. Each practice cannot generate enough GPs or work to have someone sitting there all day Saturday and all day Sunday. When the Secretary of State talks about 8 till 8, it is not clear whether he means that that will happen in each individual practice or on a regional basis. Most of the pilots that have started to publish their experiences have quickly made it into a doctors-on-call service. There is more common sense behind that approach and it is more sustainable.

We have to look at the flow within hospitals. We should not have trackers running around bean counting when patients had what done, but people going in front of patients, opening the gates, looking at bed management and ensuring that patients are in the right place.

All these matters cascade back on to staff. We are struggling to maintain and recruit staff. There was only a 50% take-up of trainees for accident and emergency, and we are haemorrhaging senior people, which exacerbates the problem. We need the co-location of GPs and we need to look at the exit block, not only out of A&E and into the hospital, but out of the hospital.

[Marie Rimmer (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab)]

A 25% reduction in the number of GPs and practice nurses has been forecast over the next five years. I have the statistics to prove that. People talk about the cost of agency staff and locums in hospitals, which is out of all proportion. There are also massive increases in costs—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)]

Order. It is essential that we keep interventions to the absolute minimum.