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Mr. Corbyn: The Minister is keen to quote savings of between £100 million and £150 million on NHS contracts. Does he recognise that that saving comes straight out of the pockets of the lowest-paid people in the national health service, creating more poverty, worse working conditions and worse living conditions for many people? Is he proud of that?
Mr. Horam: The hon. Gentleman is wrong. The service improvement has come from a reconfiguration of services and greater efficiency by the providers. There has been no loss of quality in the service and, often, pay has not been reduced. The hon. Gentleman mentioned pay at Hillingdon. The rate for cleaners there is £3.69 an hour--one of the best in the area according to the Uxbridge and Hayes job centres. General airport cleaners at Heathrow--broadly comparable with Hillingdon staff--earn £3.50 an hour. The pay conditions implemented by Pall Mall at Hillingdon are no worse than is general for the area. Not only that, the hon. Gentleman failed to mention that, when the changes in the TUPE arrangements were negotiated, the workers were offered compensation of between £400 and £1,000. The hon. Gentleman cannot, therefore, say that the provider has behaved badly in this case.
Mr. Corbyn: I am glad that the Minister has given way on that point. He failed to say that the overtime and weekend rates were cut as a result of the change. Does he recognise--it is important that he does--that Pall Mall had a contractual agreement with the cleaners which it unilaterally broke in 1995? That is the nub of the argument. The company gave a solemn undertaking in October 1994 that the staff would be employed, under
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TUPE, on existing conditions of service. It broke that undertaking and subsequently dismissed the women from their jobs.
Mr. Horam: If the hon. Gentleman is reasonable, he will recognise--
Mr. Horam: I am glad to hear it. The hon. Gentleman should recognise that the changes were a result of renegotiation--for which compensation was paid--which was part of a change in the services that the provider wished to make.
Mr. Corbyn: I do not accept that.
Mr. Horam: Well, the fact is that the hon. Gentleman's own union negotiated an agreement which the workers did not accept. The hon. Gentleman made great play of the point that we should stand up for workers' rights and so forth, but when the union of which he is a member said to the workers in the dispute, "We advise you to settle on the terms that Pall Mall is willing to offer", they refused. Where does the hon. Gentleman stand? Is he in favour of trade union members accepting what has been negotiated by their officers or not?
Mr. Corbyn: The Minister and I both have a background of trade union negotiation and activity. The difference is that he pretends to forget it, whereas I do not. He knows perfectly well that, on many occasions, a union recommends something to its members which they subsequently do not accept. The duty of the union is then to continue to represent those members until they are satisfied with what is on offer. Unison has continued to represent those members, and it continues to campaign for their reinstatement and to try to force Pall Mall to keep to the agreement that it made in October 1994. What the public need to know from the Minister is whether he supports the Pall Mall group in its unilateral reneging on the conditions under which it employed the women in October 1994.
Mr. Horam: The hon. Gentleman acknowledged the point that, unlike some of my colleagues, I have particular experience of trade unions. What that taught me was the realism that trade union negotiators often bring to situations where two sides may be very divided on what they wish to achieve. The practical negotiating skills that trade union negotiators often deploy should not be ignored. The fact is that Unison negotiators achieved an agreement which was then unilaterally turned down by the workers in question. One has to question why that was. I take no side on the issue, but I merely point out the facts. An agreement was brokered by Unison which the workers felt it right to turn down, for whatever reasons.
Before I was slightly sidetracked by the hon. Gentleman--quite reasonably, and I am not complaining about that--I was justifying the Government's approach to market testing. Market testing offers a practical and proven way in which to determine the best way in which to meet support service needs, in terms of both quality and value for money. It also gives local managers opportunities regularly to review support services in the
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If a contract is awarded under the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 1981, which we all know as TUPE, staff transfer to the new contractor. Under TUPE, the new service provider, who is usually an incoming contractor, takes over the contracts of employment of all employees who were employed in the undertaking at the time of the relevant transfer. It is then up to him after a suitable period, if he wishes to do so, to renegotiate the contracts in the light of the situation as he sees it. It is not unusual to find that, in such a situation, the new provider offers compensation for any changes that he may wish to make in the contracts.
It is interesting that, of the people working for Pall Mall, as my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge said, 200 accepted all the changes. The only people who did not do so were a particular group of workers who decided to go against the views of their own union and not to accept the position.
I shall now return to the position at Hillingdon. Hillingdon hospital market tested its hotel services in 1994 and awarded a five-year contract to Pall Mall in October of that year. The hotel services concerned were catering, sterile services, laundry and portering, as well as cleaning, which had originally been contracted out to a different firm in the late 1980s.
The estimated savings achieved against previous costs were £500,000 on a contract for hotel services worth about £4 million. The contract won by Pall Mall at Hillingdon hospital was one to which TUPE applied. As a result, both the national health service workers affected and the domestic staff, who were already privately employed, became employees of Pall Mall, keeping their existing terms and conditions of employment.
Pall Mall spent six months in negotiation and consultation over new contracts for the transferred staff. The package included new shift patterns and rates of pay comparable with other employees in similar jobs in the area. I have spelled out the exact figures for the hon. Gentleman. More than 90 per cent. of the transferred work force signed the new contracts in autumn 1995. Regrettably, 30 domestic staff refused to accept the new contract and their existing contracts were terminated by Pall Mall on 31 October last year. A further 22 staff signed the new contract but never went back to work and were deemed by Pall Mall to have dismissed themselves.
Earlier this year, ACAS brokered an arrangement between the parties in the dispute which was recommended by Unison, as I mentioned, but which its members unfortunately rejected. The reasonableness or otherwise of that arrangement is not something on which I wish to comment, given the current industrial tribunal hearing.
The fact is that Pall Mall employs approximately 210 staff at Hillingdon hospital. None is on strike and Pall Mall is meeting its contractual obligations at the hospital under the contract for the hotel and cleaning services.
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What concerns me is the action taken by some of the more vociferous individuals involved in the dispute. I understand that at one point, pickets using loudhailers were causing such a commotion that the hospital was concerned for the treatment of patients in intensive care. Hospital management pleaded with the pickets to moderate their behaviour. There are, therefore, questions about the behaviour of the pickets and not only about the behaviour of the management.
Mr. Corbyn:
I have been waiting for the Minister to get on to smearing people who have lost their jobs as a result of a contract granted to a wealthy multinational corporation. Can the Minister now tell us--I have asked him this three times already--whether he approves of Pall Mall's action in imposing new conditions of service on staff in breach of its undertaking in October 1994? An important principle is involved. The Minister should recognise the justice of the workers' case and the strong passions aroused by the company's behaviour instead of attacking people who are trying to defend their existing conditions of service.
Mr. Horam:
I was pointing out that I am responsible for the health service. I was also pointing out that some patients at Hillingdon were being seriously inconvenienced and that their health may have been detrimentally affected by the behaviour of the pickets outside. I deplore that, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman does too. Whatever he may feel about the rights of the pickets in question, he should realise that they should not interfere with the provision of health care at Hillingdon hospital. Does he accept that? The hon. Gentleman says nothing, but I feel as strongly about that point as he does about his case.
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