Nurses (Grading) (Hansard, 25 July 1989)

§ 1. Mr. Ernie Ross
To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will make a statement on the progress of appeals by nurses with regard to regradings.

§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Mr. Roger Freeman)
The grading appeals are being dealt with under a longstanding agreement between the management and staff sides of the general Whitley council on procedures for settling differences over NHS employees' conditions of service.
Detailed arrangements for operating this agreement are for local decision.

§ Mr. Ross
The Under-Secretary will know that today a large delegation of Confederation of Health Service Employees nurses attended the Scottish Grand Committee, which was discussing health. Many of those nurses are still awaiting their gradings which were originally given on 31 October 1988. Can the Minister give the House a guarantee that those appeals will be heard by 31 October 1989?

§ Mr. Freeman
No, I cannot give that assurance. It is for local health authorities to hold those appeals as expeditiously as possible. I should point out to the hon. Gentleman that the unions, including COHSE, agreed the procedure for grading appeals. We are following that procedure, which involves three tiers, to the letter.

§ Mr. Holt
Will my hon. Friend take it from me that, whatever scheme is in operation, the midwives in south 836 Teesside, who have been given one of the most magnificent hospitals in the country, are thoroughly fed up at having to wait for their claims to be heard? What will the Government do, apart from sitting back and saying that it is in someone else's hands?

§ Mr. Freeman
The local health authority will be pursuing those appeals as expeditiously as possible. Midwives have enjoyed an increase in salary over the past two years of 28 per cent. on average. The concern is not about pay, it is about other conditions of service. The midwives have had an excellent pay increase and appeals will he heard as quickly as possible.

§ Mr. Fearn
Is the Minister aware that at the midwives' conference that I attended last week, and which he could not attend the night before, but attended the following day, morale was very low? That was because the grading system still has not satisfied any group of midwives. Can the Minister tell the midwives that perhaps in the next six months they will have a satisfactory answer to the grading system?

§ Mr. Freeman
Ninety per cent. of all staff midwives are on grade E and higher. They have had a remarkably successful outcome from the regrading exercise and the pay increases.

§ Mr. Robin Cook
I appreciate that this was before the Minister's time at the Department of Health, but does he recall the Secretary of State lecturing nurses last summer that if they were dissatisfied with their grades they should appeal? As they encouraged nurses to appeal as the remedy, Ministers cannot now wash their hands of the shortcomings of the appeals system. Is he aware that tens of thousands of appeals at district level will not be heard until the end of next year and that 2,000 appeals at regional level will not be heard during this Parliament? What has happened to the Secretary of State's press statement on 5 December in which he promised that appeals would be heard by this spring? Will the Minister at least assure us that they will be heard by next spring?

§ Mr. Freeman
The smooth running of the appeals machinery to which the hon. Gentleman refers has been clogged up by the unhelpful and unco-operative attitude of COHSE and the National Union of Public Employees.