My Lords, I speak in support of the amendment put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Merron. As recently as 20 July this year, this House debated a report from our Public Services Committee, very aptly entitled Emergency Healthcare: A National Emergency. The report found the emergency healthcare workforce to be under unprecedented strain, facing significant challenges and shortages, low job satisfaction and retention rates. Ambulance staff were described as overwhelmed, fatigued and depleted. Many stated that they were suffering from work-related stress, covering for 3,000 job vacancies in the ambulance service alone.
The report concluded:
“Without concerted action to address the emergency in the system”,
many of the emergency healthcare workforce
“will leave the health service”.
The report is reinforced by the Government’s own delivery plan for recovering emergency services, also published this year. The government plan states that this is the
“most testing time in NHS history”,
which is, in its words, taking its
“toll on staff, who … work in an increasingly tough environment”.
Our ambulance services are struggling to cope. If we are to restore service to the levels that we all want, never in the history of our NHS has partnership, which has thrived in our health service for more than 75 years, been more important. The Government, employers and unions should be working together to pick the emergency healthcare workforce off the ground and to improve ways of working and service delivery for the benefit of patients.
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These draft regulations on the ambulance service have the ability to undermine all that. They have the ability to escalate tensions and worsen industrial relations at the very time when there has never been a greater need for the Government to enhance social partnership working within the ambulance service.
The Government are ignoring NHS Employers, which made it clear that it did not want the legislation. As my noble friend Lady Merron pointed out, NHS Providers told the Government that it would be a further challenge to industrial relations at the very time when the NHS needs to protect them. The Government are also ignoring their own impact assessment, which showed how unworkable the statutory instrument would be. The assessment referred to stakeholders who thought that
“the issuing of work notices would be challenging and time-consuming”.
It also referred to the difficulty of
“consulting with a number of unions”
and
“communicating with workers, who may disagree”—
the list goes on.
This legislation has all the hallmarks of the worst form of skeleton legislation, as criticised by our Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. It was a Bill so devoid of content that it left the operation of the law to Ministers. The consultation process gave the impression to the world that the Government had recognised—even praised—the joint arrangements already in place. Now, however, the draft regulations relating to ambulance services have set the bar so high that many could not be achieved on a normal working day, let alone in the current circumstances.
It has often been said that, in this country, we have among the most draconian restrictions in the western world on workers legally withdrawing their labour. For ambulance workers, paramedics, nurses and control room staff, taking industrial action is the last resort. For many, the action taken in the past year was the first in their working lives. For many, pummelled by a pandemic and hammered by the cost of just living, it was a cry for help. Now, however, if the Government have their way, some will face the possibility of dismissal for taking lawful industrial action. Ministers of all political parties have always wanted to look tough on striking public service workers; it is par for the course. However, this legislation and these draft regulations can do so much damage without, in the words of NHS Providers,
“providing a useful alternative approach to managing service provision during periods of strike action”—
its words, not mine.
The statutory instrument on ambulances rides rough- shod over all the arrangements jointly agreed in every ambulance trust to protect patient safety. It has a real ability to undermine the social partnership working built up over half a century, which is so essential if we are to implement successfully the long-awaited NHS long-term workforce plan and restore the health of our nation. It is for these reasons that I ask this House to support the amendment on ambulances and NHS transport put forward by my noble friend Lady Merron.