HC Deb 23 May 1989 vol 153 cc786-7
4. Mr. Vaz

To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will make a statement on the nurses regrading appeals in the Leicestershire health district.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Mr. Roger Freeman)

The grading appeals are being dealt with under a long-standing 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 the agreement are for local decision.

Mr. Vaz

Does the Minister agree with the statement made by the director of personnel of the Leicestershire health authority that the appeal procedures are a major distraction from the work of the National Health Service? Does he also agree that in processing the 1,500 appeals that have been made it will take up to two years—until mid-1991—to clear the backlog, which will be a substantial hardship for those who have appealed? Why does he not just allow those appeals and enable the nurses to get the salaries that they so obviously deserve?

Mr. Freeman

More than 500,000 posts in the National Health Service were subject to regrading last year. Some nurses have appealed, and those appeals are progressing at local level under a procedure agreed with the trade unions. The vast majority of nurses are satisfied with their new grading and pay last year went up by an average of 18 per cent. as a result.

Mr. Tredinnick

Is it not a fact that whereas under the last Labour Government nurses' pay was actually cut, under the Conservative Administration it has increased by 44 per cent., including a rise of 25 per cent. in the past two years?

Mr. Freeman

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. The statistics show that in the five years to 1979 nurses' pay went down in real terms by 21 per cent.