NHS Industrial Action: Government Preparations
Debate between Will Quince and Jerome Mayhew(1 year, 4 months ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
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Will Quince
The hon. Lady talks about NHS staffing levels; we have 1.2 million staff within our NHS, and compared with last year, we have 3,700 more doctors and 9,100 more nurses, and compared with 2019, we have 29,000 more nurses and 2,200 more GPs, but we do have high vacancies. That is why it will not have escaped her notice that we have commissioned NHS England to publish a long-term workforce plan, and that will be independently verified as set out by the Chancellor in the autumn statement.
Jerome Mayhew (Broadland) (Con)
Inflation is the real enemy here, because it makes us all poorer. We have a political and economic choice: we either tackle it, or we give in to an inflation pay spiral. The Minister was right to mention that the Royal College of Nursing pay demands are in excess of three times greater than the average private sector payment at the moment. Does my hon. Friend agree that public sector pay demands of almost 20% would embed inflation for years to come and make us all poorer?
Universal Credit: Court of Appeal Judgment
Debate between Will Quince and Jerome Mayhew(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Will Quince
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. I stress that we received the judgment only on Monday and it is a hugely complex issue. That is recognised by the court—it is not a simple fix, as the hon. Gentleman points out. He knows that we are facing unprecedented demand, because he has raised this question with me before. I said that I will keep the House and the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, updated as we progress.
On the hon. Gentleman’s points relating to assessment periods, there are some aspects of the universal credit system that are fundamental to its design and are deliberately designed to achieve its original objectives—to mirror the world of work. This includes the mechanism of a monthly assessment period and, of course, the initial assessment period at the beginning of a claim. It is important to stress that over 75% of people in this country are paid monthly and the majority of countries in the European Union also have systems that operate on a monthly basis.
Jerome Mayhew (Broadland) (Con)
In March alone, about 1.24 million new applicants relied on the universal credit system to be able to process their claims and pay them within days vitally important sums of money to help them live. While the case has properly highlighted about 1,500 outlier cases, does my hon. Friend agree that it was the Government’s decision to invest in an automated digital system that does not require manual intervention by DWP officers to carry out individual calculations of the amount of an award that has allowed this to happen?
Will Quince
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It was this Conservative Government who introduced our modern, dynamic, agile new benefits system, tailored for the claimant’s personal circumstances. The fact it is online means we have been able to process the claims of more than 3 million people, getting them the support they desperately need as quickly as possible. Just imagine for a moment, Mr Speaker, the chaos that would have ensued had we been relying on Labour’s broken legacy benefits system alone. Thank heavens for universal credit.