Ambulance Dispute (Hansard, 23 November 1989)

§ Mr. Dave Nellist (Coventry, South-East)

Despite the remarks of the Leader of the House, I beg to ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 20, for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration, namely, The escalating ambulance dispute, and the introduction of outside agencies into the west midlands accident and emergency service. Clearly, the dispute is escalating today. The police have been called in as makeshift crews in Derbyshire as managers have suspended crews throughout the county. The Army is expected there at the weekend. The Army is already on the streets of London and Hertfordshire. Yesterday, at one o'clock, Mr. Barry Johns, the chief officer of the west midlands ambulance service called in the St. John ambulance and the Red Cross service to deal with 999 calls in Birmingham.

No one doubts the generosity of those unpaid volunteers under normal circumstances. However, they are not professional ambulance workers. They do not have the training or the experience to deal with accident and emergency work.

The Government's intransigence is seriously threatening lives in the west midlands area. In my area of Coventry, the Army is on standby. If it were called in, it would be based at Little Park street police station in my constituency. Those squaddies will not know the streets of Coventry. They will have had only a couple of days refresher training. At the weekend I received a telephone call from the mother of one soldier who told me that they are on £30 a day standby money and that they are threatened with the glasshouse if they refuse those duties.

Yet the Government insist on ambulance workers taking a pay cut when directors can have 28 per cent. Members of Parliament can have 11 per cent. while ambulance workers are apparently allowed only 6.5 per cent. It is a national scandal that the dispute can be debated in workplaces, pubs and schools throughout the country, but we cannot get the Secretary of State for Health into the Chamber to justifiy the craven tactics he is pursuing in the dispute.

If the dispute is not settled soon, there will be growing pressure for solidarity action from other trade unionists. There is widespread recognition of the heroic actions of all the emergency services, not only at Deal and Clapham. The Prime Minister, the Secretary of State for Energy and the right hon. Member for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit) should hang their heads in shame because at Brighton they welcomed the ambulance workers alongside the firefighters and the police, but now they will not pay them a decent wage. Throughout the country, trade unionists recognise that those workers cannot be asked to go out on indefinite strike. However, millions of factory workers would be willing to give up a day's pay to back the ambulance workers and bring the Government to heel.

I urge you to give us a debate, Mr. Speaker, bring the Secretary of State for Health to the Chamber and force him to withdraw the Army and pay ambulance workers a decent wage before the Government's tactics cause another life to be lost.