Junior Doctors: Industrial Action

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Monday 5th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I have a stunning new ministerial team, two of whom I am pleased to see here today, but I wish to take this moment to say how much I enjoyed working with my right hon. Friend last year. Then, as now, his advice and thoughts are very wise. The Government have made 107 concessions, and the BMA might like to think what signal it sends if that many concessions are made, an agreed deal is reached with the union leadership and the reaction then is for the most extreme strike in history to be called. What encouragement will that give to other Ministers to be moderate and reasonable in their negotiations with unions? The position being taken is preposterous and many other choices could have been made when dealing with losing the ballot, but he is right in what he says.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

A lack of workforce planning and weak financial management have led to staff shortages, which have been a major contributor to this dispute. The Department of Health accounts and NHS England accounts, which came out on 21 July, underlined that weakness in financial planning, with the Comptroller and Auditor General saying clearly that he had real concerns about the future sustainability of NHS funding. We have, however, heard the Secretary of State say again today that the £10 billion available is to solve the issue about the seven-day NHS, but we have also heard that money promised for many other things by the head of NHS England. Does the Secretary of State really have a plan for the financial sustainability of the NHS? If so, what is it?

[Mr Hunt]

We do and we are implementing it. I know that the hon. Lady has looked at this in great detail, and I simply say, in broad terms, that following the tragedy of what happened at Mid Staffs the NHS was very honest about how some of the poor care there was happening in other places and NHS trusts decided that they needed to have more staff in their hospital wards. The poor workforce planning that she talked about, which goes back many decades in the NHS, meant that the result was an explosion in the use of agency staff, the cost of which rose to more than £3.5 billion in the last financial year, which has put huge pressure on finances. The lesson that we must take away, not just for the junior doctors’ strike, but for financial sustainability, is that we need to be better at workforce planning and training up the number of doctors and nurses that we need.