11. Plaid Cymru Debate: NHS Pay and Conditions

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:33 pm on 18 September 2019.

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Photo of Angela Burns Angela Burns Conservative 5:33, 18 September 2019

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I formally move those amendments. But I'm afraid that my colleague over the Chamber here, Llyr Huws Gruffydd, has said exceptionally eloquently pretty much everything I wanted to say. Because we  have an NHS that is under an immense amount of pressure. We have staff who work over and above the call of duty. They work longer hours and they don't chase overtime payments, which they very, very seldom would get anyway. They stay and don't have the breaks they should have, because there's always somebody who needs a bit of help, somebody who needs lifting, somebody who needs feeding, and a drug to administer, a handover to undertake. They don't ask for that extra money; they just get on and do it. The RCN has been very clear about if every single nurse in the Welsh NHS worked to time we would have some shocking shortfall of nurses throughout Wales—in the order of 3,500 to 4,000 personnel.

So, when you're under that immense pressure, to—as you have said, Llyr—have people tinkering around the edges and making those kinds of changes actually just makes you feel incredibly unloved, unworthy, undervalued. I think what goes against the grain is that the parliamentary review was really clear about the importance, going forward, that the vision for health was going to put on staff and on patients that we were going to become a much more people-centric NHS. 

Because I'll ask you this, Members—the NHS, if nothing else, is a people business. It is all about people—the people who are patients, the people who are the people who work in it, who make people well, who send them back out into the world. It's about human interactions, it's about communication, it's about skill, it's about one person helping another person or being part of another person's life for a very brief moment, and you have to feel good about yourself to do it. And I want to just do a quick comparison, and I hold my hands up to this: on the days when I don't feel great, when I'm tired, when I'm knackered, when I'm fed up, when I'm reading 450 committee papers in a very short space of time, I'm pretty short with my husband, I'm pretty short with my kids, I'm pretty you know, because I feel under pressure, I feel under stress. It's how human beings react. So, what are we doing to all these NHS staff who are working their socks off for us? We're putting them under even more pressure, but expecting them to be sunshine and light, to do their job the best they can with that passion in their heart.

Now, it is all about cost saving, and Betsi does need to trim some of its sails, but there are better places to trim those sails. And I would suggest that PricewaterhouseCoopers, who have helped them to do this little exercise, are probably very good at looking at the numbers and very good at looking at the books, but I really challenge them to walk through those wards in the dead of night and get on and do and see what these staff do. 

We absolutely support your motion. We've made a few amendments, but it was an effort to try to just tidy it up and to make it sharper, because the one thing we do call for, Minister, is for you personally, directly, to intervene in this, to have a long, hard look, because you've already in earlier debates today said that you react and make things go directive because health boards aren't performing. Betsi is not performing, and this latest thing is just going to upset so many people and cause morale—. I've run out of time, but I just want to make one final point. Staff sickness absence for mental health issues within Betsi Cadwaladr has risen year on year on year, and in 2018-19—and these are little figures, and I couldn't believe it when I read them—full-time days lost, over 72,000. You get those days back into Betsi Cadwaladr, back into the NHS and you'd have a completely different NHS. You can only do it with happy, healthy staff who feel rewarded and feel that people are committed to them.