David Harding-Price

By David Harding-Price davidhardingprice

In order to make care safer and ultimately cheaper, the NHS must be prepared to pay more for expertise.

The RCN’s Frontline First report has identified a loss of almost 4,000 experienced nursing posts since 2010. This is not only a dangerous loss of experience and skills that are essential to ensuring patient safety and driving up standards, it will also have a significant impact on how we support and develop future generations of nurse specialists and leaders. Furthermore, it could result in nurses leaving the profession early as they see the opportunities for career progression demolished.

Tie this in to the Royal College of Nursing report from 2013, in which we found that 60% of nurses said they had considered quitting their job in the previous year. In addition, the number saying they were enthusiastic about coming into work falling below the 70% mark for the first time in a decade as has happened, the Government should be asking the question why is this the case?

No one comes into nursing to make a fortune nor do nurses expect to sit around all day in an office. But when I hear of nurses using food banks, working extra shifts to pay for the basics and in some cases having two jobs I have to ask the question – exactly who is caring for the carers? At the same time, the amount of paperwork that nurses are being asked to complete is increasing. In the past, every ward/clinic had a clerk whose role it was to ensure equipment was ordered, notes provided and other non-clinical administration tasks completed. Increasingly these staff are being lost and still their duties have to be completed.

After working in the NHS for over 36 years, I think I can safely say I have seen most things, but even I was shocked to hear of some managers in the NHS giving themselves 30+% pay rises whilst expecting nurses to cover the service deficits on either basic pay or no additional pay.
The NHS spends a fortune every year on agency staff and increasingly staff who work full time in the NHS are finding the agency staff unable or even in some cases unwilling to be anything more than a number on a duty roster.

A simple solution would be if the NHS paid overtime to the staff who work on the wards, in the clinics and in the community for the extra work they do to care for their patients. It would in the long-term cost less. At the same time it would go some way to help staff with living costs. If you work in a non health related private sector industry and you do overtime you are paid up to double time for your work. In the NHS, you get nothing and in some cases worse – abuse.

At the same time, letting the experienced clinical staff go or even making them redundant. This is not going to improve healthcare outcomes. If senior staff have to be cut then lets us start looking at the non-clinical manager at Board level and the salaries of those staff on senior management pay.

We all know that David Cameron will pay the £1.7 billion demanded by the European Parliament, so if he can find £1.7 billion for Europe, why is it he cannot find £750 million to meet the pay review body’s recommendation for nurses and other NHS staff? George Osbourne said the pay rise was affordable. Could it be after all Mr Cameron’s rhetoric about the NHS the reality is his party does not want a National Health Service free at the point of delivery paid for by taxation? He would rather a privatised service where your health is bought and sold on an open market.

I leave you with these two questions and ask you on behalf of all the nurses, midwives and other NHS staff to start lobbying not only your MPs but also the prospective parliamentary candidates. Those working in the NHS need the support of the public and for the public to remind the politicians that the NHS founded by the 1946 Act is here to provide health care to all, free at the point of delivery, paid for by taxation.

Sadly, none of the main parties is talking the real talk about the NHS and until they do the NHS is at risk of dying. The NHS is about time and care and both of these cost. Yet the very people who can make the savings – the experienced nurses – are being reduced in number. Whichever way you look at it, the NHS is a political football and politicians should not be allowed to kick around our health.

David is a retired NHS nurse, but is currently the Royal College of Nursing’s Council Member for the East Midlands and is Honorary Treasurer of the RCN. David was also a Lib Dem MP candidate for Lincoln in the past. He has two grown up children and enjoys photography and swimming in his spare time.

By David Harding-Price davidhardingprice

This week we saw some NHS staff going on strike for four hours; in the case of some staff for the first time in 30 years. Whilst I have sympathy with their actions I am concerned that NHS staff have been forced by the coalition government into this position. David Cameron has said publically he uses the NHS and would never do anything to harm it and yet he continues to allow the Health Secretary to ignore the reality of the situation.

Firstly, the Health Secretary says staff get a pay rise in their increments and that others do not get such increments. This is untrue: a number of private sector employers use increments to retain staff and reward those who improve their skills and knowledge.

Next, the Health Secretary says that a 1% rise for all nurses is not affordable and 4,000 nurses would have to be lost from the NHS to pay for this. Again untrue. The cost of a 1% rise would be approximately £750 million. The amount of the NHS under spend last year (2013-2014) was £2.2billion. This money was not used for patient care but to pay off the debts caused by the financial crash. A 2% pay raise for nurses would therefore be less that the amount of last year’s under spend and would show that as a nation we care for the people who day in and day out care for us.

Who under normal circumstances work more hours each week than they are paid for without complaining?

At the same time, the Health Secretary allowed NHS managers to give themselves pay raises in some cases of 30% on a salary of over £100,000.

Lastly, the Health Secretary says we would lose 4,000 nurses but the NHS is already 10,000 nursing staff below safe working levels, and managers are continually going abroad to recruit nurses, whilst British nurses are finding that they can earn more with less stress working in a local supermarket. Many of the overseas nurses return to their home country within 18 months because they are unhappy with the work conditions in the NHS.

Margaret Thatcher introduced private business into the NHS, John Major expanded it and Tony Blair continued privatisation with the Private Finance Initiatives (PFIs) which built new hospitals. One problem with the PFIs is the local hospital is never owned by the local community, the companies charge exorbitant management fees and make life for the estates staff impossible even to the point of not letting staff put up pictures or even clinical notices on walls. It has been estimated that some hospitals are paying almost double what it would have cost if they had taken out a mortgage and built it themselves and they still do not own the building.

Now, David Cameron wants to bring the TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) into the NHS and Social Care. This will only lead to more privatisation and an ever increase in the reduction in services free at the point of delivery paid for by taxation. Even Europe’s more capitalist country Germany is against the introduction of TTIP in health & social care. The 1946 NHS Act was designed by the then-Labour Government to provide all citizens of Great Britain with a health care service that was free at the point of delivery. This was to ensure that we never went back to the days where women and children died because they could not afford the doctor’s fee. In many families, the only person who saw the doctor was the man of the house because if he was ill and was not able to work there was no money coming in.

The NHS has become the best health service in the world. Nurses, doctors and other healthcare professionals come from all over the globe to see how it works and to learn from our high quality staff. This government want to privatise the NHS and the result will be a two-tier system, a system of healthcare from which no one in the world will want to learn.

A 2% pay rise is affordable. The NHS has shown this with the underspend and cost savings. Even if the government were to limit the 2% consolidated rise just to all the staff band 7 (or equivalent) and below that would show to the clinical staff; who care day in day out; that are being cared for by the government. At present, they are not.

The only way the government is going to listen is if the public start visibly siding with the nurses and reminding the politicians at all levels that the NHS is the world’s greatest health care system and is only so because of the excellent staff who work tirelessly to care for all of us.

David is a retired NHS nurse, but is currently the Royal College of Nursing’s Council Member for the East Midlands and is Honorary Treasurer of the RCN. David was also a Lib Dem MP candidate for Lincoln in the past. He has two grown up children and enjoys photography and swimming in his spare time.