Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mark Durkan and Ben Gummer

Wednesday 7th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Ben Gummer]

I, too, look forward to continuing my long-standing relationship with the Chairman of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, my near constituency neighbour. I agree with him entirely on his point about senior talent. We need to get as much talent as possible into the civil service at all levels. I have recently met the senior talent team in the civil service, a very impressive outfit, who have their work cut out to make sure that we can do even better.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

In the context of the recent machinery of government changes, when will we know—or can the Minister tell us now—who will have responsibility for cross-Government co-ordination in respect of the work of the British-Irish Council, which relates to all eight Administrations in these islands?

[Ben Gummer]

I retain responsibility for the constitution as a whole, as does the Cabinet Office. I shall write to the hon. Gentleman with a detailed reply so that he can have the satisfaction of that.

NHS Bursary

Debate between Mark Durkan and Ben Gummer

Monday 11th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Ben Gummer]

The hon. Lady probes like an expert, but she should know that there has been a detailed assessment of the impact of the changes as part of the policy development, which is still taking place. When we launch the consultation, the full details of the assessment will be made public as part of the process, so she will be able to see very soon what the changes will mean.

My hon. Friend the Member for Lewes spoke with great eloquence about her own nursing experience. Other hon. Members may not know that she has a master’s degree connected with her nursing work. She certainly knows about the full gamut of the academic discipline of nursing, and I take her views with considerable seriousness. She was right to point out that the change is part of a wider package of reform.

Several hon. Members spoke clearly and, in one case, movingly, about people who want to become nurses but cannot, either because they did not achieve the necessary grades earlier in life to go to university—that was a failing of their education rather than because of an innate inability to be a nurse or to pass the exams—or because they have caring responsibilities. We want both sorts of people to be in nursing, because they care and because of their vocational call to be nurses. At the moment, a significant number of them are working as healthcare assistants and cannot progress to being nurses. They are prevented from doing so unless they leave the workforce, go to university and then come back into the system. Even under the existing arrangements, that makes it impossible for many of them, which is profoundly wrong.

That is why it is a priority for me, as I announced a few weeks ago, to open up an apprenticeship route to enable healthcare assistants to move from a band 3 position in the NHS to an intermediate new position—nursing associate—that is part of a vocational route to full nursing registration. The exciting thing about that is that it will provide a dual training route into nursing. There is the traditional nursing undergraduate route, which will still take three years, and there will be the new route—an apprenticeship—which will open up nursing to a whole new group of applicants who are currently precluded from achieving their dream of going into nursing and who do not even count in the statistics of those refused a place.

In the round, we are doing what I hope many Opposition Members want. I share their wish to see the diversity of the workforce, which is already one of the most diverse in the country, improve still further, and to see opportunity expanded, the quality of training improved and support given to people at university. Conservative Members also want all those things.

I appreciate the sensitive way in which hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber have spoken. I also appreciate that they may disagree with how the Government want to proceed to try to improve nurse training. In the absence of alternative ideas, I believe that our proposals really are the way to expand places, improve diversity, increase opportunity, especially for those from disadvantaged backgrounds, improve quality and provide support for those at university.

[Mark Durkan]

The Minister has criticised colleagues several times during the debate and said that the Government are not hearing alternatives. Will he reframe the consultation so that they can hear alternatives? It is clear that people want to work on a different premise and to a different agenda, with much better outcomes, including achieving the important goal of better equipment that he referred to. Widening the consultation would allow those alternatives to be heard, but the way the consultation is framed at the moment means they will not be heard.

[Ben Gummer]

I would be delighted to hear alternatives, and not just via the medium of the consultation. I would very much like them to be offered within the current spending envelope, but if people wish to offer alternatives outside that envelope, they must explain how much they will cost and how they will be funded. Within that spending envelope, the reforms will allow us to expand the number of places and improve quality, support and opportunity.

Finance (No. 4) Bill

Debate between Mark Durkan and Ben Gummer

Thursday 19th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Ben Gummer]

The hon. Lady is entirely right. One of the terrifying things that comes out of all public opinion surveys is the lack of savings and even the lack of people expecting to save for their old age. I hope that the reforms brought in by the Minister responsible for pensions—the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Steve Webb)—for auto-enrolment and encouraging savings will be the beginning of a fully funded pensions system.

However, that is for another debate. I am aware of the strictures regarding Committee time and the fact that other Members wish to speak. I would therefore like to make one final comment. Lord Turner’s 2005 report, which was commissioned by the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), said that

“unless new government initiatives can make a major difference to behaviour, the present voluntary system of pension savings, combined with the present state system, is unlikely to deliver adequate pension provision.”

Moreover, he went on to say that the only means of achieving that would be through cross-party consensus. If we are to be serious about providing decent pensions, not only to people today, but to people in five, 10 and 15 years’ time—that includes people retiring this year and next year, who will be in their 80s and 90s when we will really be starting to pick up the bill—all parties must, between us, come to some sort of consensus about the difficult decisions that need to be made.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

In that context, does the hon. Gentleman agree that if we are to encourage confidence among people out there that they can commit to planning and saving for their pensions, no Government should ever engage in an easy drive-by hit on pensioners?

[Ben Gummer]

The hon. Gentleman would be right, were the changes in the Bill modest to that degree. They represent a freeze for those who are already receiving the allowance, which will be merged into the basic rate allowance which will then move up towards it. In that regard, the taper could not be more gentle.

It is entirely right to say that the Government need to sketch out a very long-term plan for pensions, and I know that the Pensions Minister is beginning that process, but it will need the support, input and intellectual vigour of Members such as the hon. Member for Leeds West if it is to be a success in the long term. Otherwise, we and our successors will be unable to pay the bill, and pensioners will be freezing and starving as a result. The bill will be unaffordable and we will be fighting to pay it against a global economy in which we are unable to compete. That is a terrifying prospect, and I hope that we can begin to deal with it now by supporting the Government in what I hope is the first of many of the changes that need to be made in order to protect the living standards, the decency and the dignity of those people who have worked hard all the way through their lives.