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Thursday, 27 April 2006 10:55 | BNN: British Nursing News Online · www.bnn-online.co.uk
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Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt was yesterday heckled for the second time in three days by health workers as she gave a speech at the Royal College of Nursing conference.
Delegates jeered and slow handclapped the health secretary and eventually interrupted her speech to ask a series of hostile questions.
Earlier this week Ms Hewitt received an angry response as she addressed the health workers union Unison.
The RCN predicted on Sunday that job cuts in the NHS would reach 13,000.
Responding to their concerns, Ms Hewitt said: "This is a very challenging time in the NHS and for everybody working in it. We all need to be honest and realistic about the time ahead."
She added: "I know that you're angry about the possibility of redundancies among some hospital staff. Anybody facing the prospect of redundancy is entitled to feel that."
With the audience jeering and laughing, she added: "We all know the NHS is getting more money than ever before. Of course most of the NHS is not in deficit. The majority of NHS hospitals and organisations are in balance or in surplus."
The health secretary said trusts would have to move away from using agency staff, which she said were not the most efficient way to deliver patients care. Agencies are estimated to cost the NHS £1bn a year.
She also stressed the improvements seen in recent years, including better pay for nurses, more staff and more lives being saved.
"The significant majority of staff got a pay rise. The pay rise over the last few years in the public sector has been significantly in advance of the private sector."
She went on to say that many trusts had been in deficit for years before recently coming to light.
"For decades, the overspenders have been bailed out by the underspenders."
But she was interrupted as the crowd grew increasingly disgruntled and the conference chair asked whether she would give way.
He said: "Are you finished yet... because you stated there are a few questions you wanted to take."
One delegate told Ms Hewitt: "You are a brave lady to come here after saying the NHS has had its best year yet."
The health secretary responded, saying there were more demands on the NHS because “patients expect more”.
"There are new drugs... and that's why we have got to keep getting better value for money so we release money for new drugs and all the new improvements we want to make."
At several points during the question and answer session she was forced to stop and wait for the noise to die down.
She complained that delegates would "shout" whatever she told them.
"I'm sorry if you don't like the answers. But at least ... at least let me give them."
RCN general secretary Beverly Malone said the reaction of nursing was an illustration of the "frustration" they felt.
"I think what happened was the reality of what nurses are feeling."
Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said: "The Labour Party is no longer the party of the NHS.
"I am sorry that it should have come to this- respected health professionals with no respect for the health secretary.
"Patricia Hewitt has brought this on herself. She is being held to account for her gross mismanagement and incompetence. It is intolerable arrogance that she is still denying the reality. Will no level of humiliation make her understand?"
And Liberal Democrat health spokesman Steve Webb added: "The government's permanent revolution and constant meddling has demoralised the bedrock of the NHS."
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