Schedule 1 - Constitution of public benefit corporations
Health and Social Care (Community Health and Standards) Bill
8:55 am
Dr Andrew Murrison (Westbury, Conservative)
I am rather surprised by this amendment because it seems to ignore the reality of employment in the NHS in two respects. First, junior doctors in particular often work on relatively short-term contracts, which tend to be in
blocks of six months. I have worked in such a capacity, and I am sure that the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris) has too. Very often, doctors go from six-month block to six-month block, and that can continue for years and years. If this amendment were to be accepted, I fear that such individuals would be excluded from the public constituency.
Secondly, Ministers have ignored the reality of the situation for agency staff. As my hon. Friend the Member for West Chelmsford (Mr. Burns) pointed out, agency staff are not employed by an NHS trust, but may nevertheless have an ongoing commitment to a particular hospital. Perhaps Ministers take the view that agency staff flit from one trust to another. Of course the reality is that many of them are particularly focused on one trust, and will often work in that trust for many years. Were this amendment to be accepted, we might create a situation in which people who work part-time for a trust would be part of the staff constituency, but agency staff who work full-time would not be. That seems to be quite wrong.
I urge Ministers to think about whom they are excluding with this amendment, and to recognise that it would be a real shame if these two groups of extremely valuable staff, on whom the NHS relies very heavily, were to be excluded from the staff constituency.