Tension seeker

Published: 12/06/2003, Volume II3, No. 5859 Page 20 21

As its conference approaches, Unison general secretary Dave Prentis is braced for another struggle against the government's crowd-pleasing tactics.But can he sustain meaningful opposition to issues like 'marketisation'of the NHS, PFI and foundation trusts, and keep his left wing happy?

Another year, another Unison conference, another set of stories about how the union is at 'loggerheads' with the government or likely to inflict an 'embarrassing blow' on its modernisation plans.

Tension between the unions and the government is part of the summer conference season, as familiar as rain-sodden test matches and the plucky but abject failure of Britain's tennis stars.

This makes it difficult for any but the most die-hard observer to work out the real state of play between the two sides.

However, there are signs that the tension is getting worse as the government tries out new and (it hopes) crowd-pleasing tactics in the field of public sector reform and the unions dig in against them.

Unison general secretary Dave Prentis certainly believes things have changed since Labour came to power in 1997. 'What was said was 'what matters is what works', ' he says. 'The implication was that if the public sector could deliver, that was OK. Since then, there has been a much more dogmatic view that private companies are the way forward.'

This has led to a new mood in unions. Not 'militancy', says Mr Prentis, but 'a view I subscribe to, that the future is in our hands and that if we have differences with the government we should express them and campaign to change policy'.

The tension has been obvious since 2001. In the run up to Unison's conference that year, the papers were full of stories about how Mr Prentis had 'personally promised' that there would be disputes at all 29 hospitals being built under the private finance initiative if jobs continued to be privatised.

The row fizzled out at the Labour Party conference, curtailed by the events of 11 September. But it revived last summer, with commentators predicting a 'showdown' between the government and the unions over the involvement of private firms in the public sector.

Then, The Daily Telegraph reported, prime minister Tony Blair 'suffered his worst day at a Labour Party conference since becoming prime minister as anger erupted... over his stance on Iraq and [ the private finance initiative]'. This did not stop the government bombing Iraq into liberation and effectively ignoring conference support for a review of PFI.

This year, the papers are again predicting an 'embarrassing' defeat for Mr Blair over New Labour's plans for foundation trusts, which seem to have come as a bolt from the blue as far as Unison is concerned.

Unison has hardly been 'oppositional' over NHS reform. Its assistant general secretary, Bob Abberley, sits on the NHS modernisation board and its representatives have sat through talks on PFI and pay reform.

Yet Mr Prentis says that 'no mention was made of these proposals until [health secretary Alan] Milburn went off to Spain for a weekend, came back and told us that foundation hospitals were the be-all and end-all'.

He argues that foundation hospitals will require a new army of 'advisers and backroom boys and girls', diverting money from frontline care. He also argues, despite ministerial assurances to the contrary, that they will 'poach' staff from neighbouring hospitals and suck private patients into the NHS.

'The idea is that they will be able to borrow, but against what assets?'

Mr Prentis says. 'The only thing we can see is land and private care, and we see no need for an increase in private care in the NHS.'

Foundation hospitals are good row fodder, but Mr Prentis would like to see column inches devoted to other aspects of the 'marketisation' of the NHS.

'It is not just foundations, ' he says. 'There are other changes coming in quickly. There is the move from an accountable secretary of state to an unaccountable regulator. There is the fact that the new market goes beyond the NHS.

'We are told that after five years, private hospitals will have to charge the same fees as the NHS, but we think that is contrary to EU tendering legislation. And in the meantime, they will be able to undercut or overprice, depending on what suits them best.'

Marketisation, then, is a threat to the NHS - support for which, Mr Prentis points out, is one of the few things that still differentiates Labour from the Conservatives.

'The NHS has been called the jewel in the [Labour] crown, ' he says, practising a soundbite. 'Well, they are in danger of throwing away the jewel.'

The shorthand for the way unions have responded to these changes is to say they have become more 'militant'. Mr Prentis prefers to say that they have become more vocal in their opposition to policies they do not like, and more willing to campaign publicly for change.

'When the government came in, we accepted that it would need time to bed in, ' he says. 'We didn't want to wait two years, which is what we had to wait, until the money came through but we got some early results.

'We got the national minimum wage, some action on employment rights, which, though it did not go far enough, removed some of the worst effects of the Tory legislation.

'And I do not think the government was so dogmatic about how services should be run. Indeed, it abolished the internal market in the NHS and said trusts should not negotiate individual contracts. The watershed was the 2001 election.'

Now, he says, 'there is no doubt that we are more visible than in the first term. We know that because of the publicity we receive.We are getting more coverage for what we do and we have gone out to generate that'.

Unison has been running a 'positively public' campaign to generate support for the public provision of public services. It is to step up its opposition to foundation trusts by working with MPs and members of the House of Lords to neuter the legislation needed to create them in Parliament.

However, there are Unison members that would like it to do more.

In 2001, the annual conference passed a motion demanding a review of the union's financial support for Labour. This has just been completed and will be debated at the Unison conference next week.

The leadership wants to continue with the current arrangements.

But it will face calls from more militant members to rethink the use of its political funds or even sever the funding link, given the direction of government policy.

'People know I stand up for public services and take on the government, but it is my very, very firm view that we should keep the link, that we should not walk away from it, ' says Mr Prentis.

'There will be calls from the floor to make changes, but I think the conference will have confidence in how we use our funds to deliver for Unison, not Labour.'

PFI remains a big issue. Before the last general election, Unison agreed to take part in three pilots in which NHS staff would be seconded, rather than transferred, to the private sector.

The pilots were nearly derailed at the last moment by the Treasury, which suddenly insisted that 15 per cent of staff - nominally those in supervisory positions - should be transferred.

'That was disastrous, ' says Mr Prentis. 'It meant our health conference voted against. And then we found out only 1-3 per cent of staff were involved. It was another example of the government not wanting to say no to the private sector.'

The pilots have gone ahead and Unison now hopes to negotiate a similar deal for local government workers.

The other big and controversial issue within Unison is Agenda for Change. The new pay system has taken four years to negotiate so far, and detailed job plans are still not universally available.Without these, it is hard to judge how many staff will win and lose under the new arrangements.

'This led to a big debate at this year's Unison health conference, ' says Mr Prentis, with some understatement. 'But we have balloted members about whether the early implementers should be allowed to go ahead.

'We will put a lot of resources into the early implementers; there will be full-time officers to make sure people get all the advice they need. Then we will look at whether we want to go ahead with it and put that out to another ballot.'

This 'very democratic process' will not satisfy the union's left wing.

But debate next week will be dominated by foundation hospitals, the government's direction of travel and use of the political fund.

These should generate plenty of headlines about dispute with the government, but Mr Prentis is adamant that however tense relations get, Unison will not take its money and walk off the playing field.

'We walk away from the link, we walk into the political wilderness, ' he says. 'We also leave the Labour Party open to funding by big business, which is exactly what we want to avoid.'