Regional Pay (NHS)

Debate between Geoffrey Cox and Andy Burnham

Wednesday 7th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Cox]

To be blunt, I am not happy about what I am seeing in the south-west in relation to those 20 trusts, whom I encourage to engage with staff and the unions, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson) said, and to engage in a process that tries to reach some form of consensual agreement.

To answer the right hon. Gentleman’s question, however, I suspect that those 20 trusts have joined together only out of desperation at the static and stagnating nature of the discussions at national level. They are desperate to manage their budgets. Many are in extremely difficult financial circumstances. I see my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Sir Nick Harvey) in the Chamber. I will be meeting the chief executive of Northern Devon health trust shortly, and I know the budgetary pressures that it is facing. He will tell me that it cannot wait for the slow convoy of the national negotiations to take place. I urge it to do so. I hope that we can re-engage at a national level and that there are serious and mature discussions going forward. The truth is—nobody can doubt it—that the pay bill in the national health service needs to be tackled. That is why I say again to the right hon. Member for Leigh that the position adopted by the party he represents is not responsible. What he should be doing is calling for national negotiations to take place as swiftly as possible.

[Andy Burnham]

But all the evidence says that a national pay system is more cost-effective because it does not lead to inflationary pressure around the system, so ours is not an irresponsible position. The hon. and learned Gentleman began with a very trenchant criticism of the foundation trust legislation, which has been echoed on the Liberal Democrat Benches. At the same time as that legislation was enacted, Labour was bringing forward the most ambitious ever programme to overhaul national pay in the NHS, called “Agenda for Change”. He needs to give us some credit for doing that.

[Mr Cox]

I hope I have been as balanced and fair as I can. I am not suggesting that the right hon. Gentleman has been stewarding the national health service while trusts have taken these actions; I am saying that, like the householder, he opened the door to the burglar. He cannot say now, when he has opened the door, that he deplores the fact that the burglar has gone in and robbed the property. The truth is that he presided over it when he opened the door, and he must have known that that would happen.

There are two things that the Labour party should do now. If the right hon. Gentleman left aside parliamentary games, which we all know he has engaged in, he could offer to try to tackle these grave problems at a national level by encouraging the unions to engage. He should not seek to exploit the situation by scoring political points in the way that he currently is. I say to him and to Ministers on my Front Bench that I very much hope that the outcome of the review will not be that regional pay is recommended as the way forward. I would oppose it. I cannot in conscience sit in this House, representing thousands of people on the edge of poverty in a rural economy that is sustained largely by expenditure that those on public sector salaries in the national health service receive, and preside over a situation where their incomes are further depressed.