Douglas Central MHK Chris Thomas discusses what led to his dismissal as political member from the Department of Health and Social Care.
Manx Newscast
Manx Newscast: Chris Thomas sacked from health department
I've had a very positive and productive time in the Department of Health and Social Care. I think my sort of outing of the audit report from Kirby House was quite important in the little spat that happened between former Minister Hooper and current Minister Cannon. And essentially, the Council of Ministers have decided I can't be positive and productive inside the Department of Health and Social Care, which is what I wanted to do in the national interest because of the fact that I voted against the Chief Minister indeed. I offered myself as a candidate for Chief Minister in the vote at no confidence in keys week or so ago. And like you say, you did support a motion of no confidence in the Chief Minister last week. Isn't he right to oust you if you don't support his administration then? Well, I'm not a minister. I was always a backbencher serving in the department. I'm an experienced backbencher who has been a minister. There's lots that needs doing in health care around the finance about bringing together the mandate, the operating plan, the budget. There's anger from many of the health care professionals towards the management and vice versa. And I'm good at bringing people together. So yeah, I am disappointed not to be able to serve in the national interest with Mr Cannon. I think Mr Cannon's even, to be fair, is a bit disappointed that I'm not there serving with him because it's actually the Council of Ministers who've asked me to step down. It's not the Chief Minister on this occasion. So do you think his hand was forced? Do you think if it was solely down to him, you would still be there? Well, I'll never know, but I read the letter and I look at what's happened and I think to myself, the Council of Ministers is not just humiliating the Chief Minister at the moment because I think that collectively the Council of Ministers have decided this. And I think in the debate back in October, Tim Wood, I got the impression that the Chief Minister doesn't really believe as much in the Ireland Plan as people like Mr Hooper does. And I think probably the Treasury Minister does, Dr Allinson. So have we not got to a situation now where the Chief Minister is effectively a prisoner of his Ireland Plan? He doesn't actually agree with. Do you think the Chief Minister actually has control of his own Council of Ministers? Do you think that they've said they have confidence in him because they know they can force his hand? Well, I thought it was a ridiculous position that they took in the debate. They've expressed loyalty and they went beyond what was needed because they actually said they would all resign en masse if he didn't win that motion. So effectively, they threatened instability to get stability, which is a strange way of going about things. So I'm beginning to get the impression that he's now a prisoner inside his own Council of Ministers. And I repeat what I've said over the summer, I do think there will be a time when he might choose to stand down himself. What message were you hoping to send to the Chief Minister, knowing that you were part of his machine, his government working as a political member, but also voting to get rid of him? So essentially, I praised him in my speech for his personal attention to healthcare. We need to turn healthcare around. We need to pivot Mank's care in the Department of Healthcare. So I made very supportive marks, and I said I was impressed by what he'd done, but I had to remind everybody that I fundamentally disagree with him on the Kroger gas decision. I'm a believer in hydrocarbons. I believe in exploiting our gas reserves if they're there, but I believe in doing it properly. And I think Kroger, people are beginning to see through Kroger, keep needing extensions to do it. So I pointed out that I actually didn't vote for either Chief Minister candidate back in 2021. I went after the general election because there was such a fudge going on in terms of building the coalition. The most important things that came out of the vote and no confidence to my mind are twofold. The first is that person after person said that policy matters more than personality. Alleluia, that's correct, and the second most important thing is that essentially people who voted to support government last Tuesday have got to wriggle and get out of government in public's mind pretty quickly if they don't want to go to the general election defending government. I do think the government hasn't gone in the right direction in the last three years, and now we've got a clear division between those who are in government and those who are outside, and those who are outside are both to the right of government and to the left of government. So for instance, Mr Hooper seems to have a lot in common with the Labour Party, and there's a big government, big tax, big intervention type person, that interpretation of liberalism, and there are other of us who actually believe that the Chief Minister is saying the right things when he says we have to understand we could be down to our last few years of reserves. 2010, we had two billion pounds of reserves, we're down to 1.7. The National Insurance Fund, which might now be depleted by half of its value, was only half of the total value of reserves back in 2010. It's now by far the majority of our national reserves. We've got to finance your situation and we've really got to have a good election in 2026, and hope this last couple of weeks we'll add to that, the election started basically. The Chief Minister is reportedly working closely with the DHSC political members to, in his words, review the Manx Care Mandate and budget requirements. You must have some understanding of what reviewing the Manx Care Mandate actually means. No, he is, and he's really applied himself to his task. That's why I made the speech I did in the vote of no confidence debate. So essentially what he pointed out was the sequencing of the mandate and then the budget and the operating plan was wrong. They all had to be put together together, so we have worked very hard over the last couple of weeks, him in particular with senior officers to begin the process of putting in place a better, more aligned 2025-26 set of documents. And this year we're trying to, as far as I could tell, we're trying to minimize the amount of overspend by actually cutting up, cutting away bureaucracy, the sorts of things you can cut away without affecting patient services, so full credit to him, I do think he's applying himself. And I don't think he's found anybody to step up to health care minister, but conceivably another reason why I'm no more in that department is there is a new health minister, and the new health minister didn't want Chris Thomas' departmental member. There are all sorts of explanations that could be another one. You are obviously now on the outside. The chief minister says that reviewing the Manx Care Mandate and budget requirements isn't austerity. The former health minister, Laurie Hooper, says it is. What do you think? Well, it isn't austerity, it's a reflection of the fact that if you start from the fact that we are NHS England in small scale in the Ireland man and that whatever money we first say we need, we can have, you end up with Mr Hooper's position, and that's not the chief minister's position, nor mine. We've got to make sure that every pound spent is being spent properly, firstly and secondly, you save money by bringing people with you, and the reason I move my motion in October, Tim Wood about health care was because it's so sad that the health care professionals are so out of tune and are so disappointed in management and vice versa. We have to restore relationships, and I think the public needs to remember as well it was actually my question back in June that brought to light the Kirby House review of financial control, which followed on from an internal audit report and that was obviously the supplementary question that I revealed to express my disappointment that the Treasury Minister hadn't made a statement about where that had got to in October as he promised me back in June. The Chief Minister vowed to take time to speak with MHK's following the no confidence vote. He also apologised for his shortcomings yet he sacked you in response to the no confidence motion. Do you think he's learned anything from what he heard in that debate? Well, let's hope so. I do think he will end up stepping down himself. He hasn't asked to see me for my 15 minutes discussion about it, but I suppose that's logical given. He's just asked me to move on or cancel Melissa's has in any case. I'm not aware that he's asked all of the people. I actually did take the liberty of phoning up the people who voted no confidence and none of them seem to have got an invitation for a 15 minute talk as yet, so we'll see what happens next. You're not unfamiliar with being sacked. A previous Chief Minister removed you from Coleman. You were also the DIY Minister and this administration and then you were removed. Now departmental member, are you the problem? I don't think so. I know you haven't even got everything in that because I once previously resigned from the Office of Fair Trading Vice Chairmanship over gas regulation and another time I stopped chairing the Planning Committee because of issues with planning. Now what I am is a principled politician who believes in policy. Banks politics failed in the 2021 election even more than it had done in 2016. For two reasons. Firstly, the mandate wasn't clear and the policies weren't settled in the election and that leads to the problems we've got now. Secondly, this government arrogantly, even more arrogantly than the 2016 one that I was part of from the beginning, basically started again fresh. It just forgot about everything that had gone previously and we lost so much. We had the first 100 days of this government in 2021 trying to work out a fudge about what was going to be put into the Ireland plan, proper governments that reflect the will of the people are actually beginning their work in line with the will of the people straight after the election and that's what we should have been done. That's why I didn't vote for either the Chief Minister candidates. We ended up almost with Tony Blair at one end of the cabinet table and Boris Johnson at the other end of the table and if you have that that's a ridiculous situation. And just lastly, what is next for you? Will you be taking on a more active approach with your constituency work or are you going to continue being a thorn in the government side? I'm not a thorn in government side. What I do is look always to the Ireland's interest, the national interest. I think you'll find if we look back and I hope you do this in coming weeks over last year, I think you'll find that backbenchers are actually more positive and bringing forward motions that changed policy rather than government, at least equal to them and there's so much you can do and there's so much that backbenchers like Claire Christian, Julie Age, Jason Morehouse and many of the other backbenchers have been doing Tim Glover. For instance, every government seems to want to spend money on bringing people to the Ireland. From our policy alliance, we came up with a motion whereby we want a healthcare surcharge on immigrants from outside the common travel area which pays towards health and it also equalises the playing field with other countries. It was my healthcare motion that contributed substantially to what happened in October, Tim Wuld, so I think I'll carry on being positive if that's okay by you rather than just checking rocks as is what people want to believe. Thank you for making it to the end of the Manx Radio Newscast. You are obviously someone with exquisite taste. May I politely suggest you might want to subscribe to this and a wide range of Manx Radio podcasts at your favourite podcast provider, so our best bits will magically appear on your smartphone. Thank you. [Music] You