Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
The Minister of State, Department of Health (Paul Burstow)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North (Jonathan Evans) on securing the debate and on setting out so clearly his concerns. I want to spend the rest of the debate trying to address the points he has made.
I certainly echo my hon. Friend’s comments about the excellent work that Lynn Faulds Wood has been doing over the years to highlight and raise awareness of bowel cancer, not least through her personal experience. This month, the first ever Government funded “Signs and Symptoms” campaign for bowel cancer has been launched and the pilot of the roll-out of flexi-sigmoidoscopy has also begun. The Government can therefore rightly claim to be taking these matters very seriously indeed and to want to see significant improvements in survival rates from bowel cancer.
My hon. Friend also talked about the fact that—this might come as a surprise to some people who listen to this debate or read it afterwards—private involvement in the NHS is not some creation that has occurred in the past 18 months. The interrelationships between the NHS and the private sector have been there right since its foundation and were a growing feature of it during the life of the previous Administration.
Paul Burstow
Let me develop my point a tad further and then I will be more than happy to give way to my hon. Friend, although I hope to ensure that I conclude answering the questions of my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North.
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As part of the reforms that the Government are introducing, we need to ensure that we close the loopholes that the previous Government left gaping in their legislation. We also need to ensure that, as a Government, we have transparency and clear rules under which people operate, so that we see competition as a servant of the patient’s interest and not as an end in itself. That is absolutely integral to those reforms.
Glyn Davies
I simply wish to say how shocked I was to discover the arrangements nearly 10 years ago, when I was given a colostomy nurse of my own. I was making the very point that my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North (Jonathan Evans) made—that by pushing the matter, I was threatening the future of the service in that particular hospital. If we try to address what is a legitimate concern, we must have a guarantee that there will be funding, so that we do not have a repetition of the Scottish experience.
Paul Burstow
That is a very succinct summary of the case that our hon. Friend has made in his Adjournment debate today.
Let me say something about prescribing arrangements because it may help if I set out the arrangements for these products or appliances, as they are usually called, in terms of the NHS in England. Prescribers operating under the NHS primary medical care contracts are able to prescribe as appropriate for their patients those stoma and neurology appliances listed in part IX of the drug tariff. There should be no barriers to prescribing a stoma product on the NHS, as long as it is listed in part IX of the drug tariff. NHS dispensing contractors, pharmacies, dispensing appliance contractors and dispensing doctors are able to dispense prescriptions of these products. Primary care trusts are responsible for ensuring that general practitioners are complying with their primary medical care contractual arrangements and that dispensers are complying with their contractual frameworks. Within that, there is a set of checks already in place to deal with the prescribing practices of GPs.
Jonathan Evans
In that context, will the Minister say that he deprecates off-script tendering arrangements, in which major manufacturers—in fact, multinationals—seek an arrangement with PCTs making them the sole supplier?
Paul Burstow
I will come to that part of my hon. Friend’s speech a little later, if he will forgive me.
New services associated with dispensing such appliances in primary care were introduced in April 2010—I stress that date—including emergency supply of appliances at the request of the prescriber, repeat dispensing service and, where pharmacies and appliance contractors choose, provision of appliance use, reviews and customisation of stoma appliances. Customisation—personalisation and greater choice—is an essential part of what we need throughout health care delivery.
The key point in my hon. Friend’s debate is sponsored nurses, the role that they play and possible conflicts of interest, highlighted by all hon. Members who contributed. There is concern in some parts of the industry, including companies in my hon. Friend’s constituency, which led him to write to the Minister of State, Department of Health, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns).
Paul Burstow
My hon. Friend rightly mentioned patient groups and I pay tribute to their work.
Stoma specialists play a vital role, as we have heard, supporting patients adapting to a life with a stoma, which often involves a number of physical and psychological changes. Stoma care patients face a number of issues, many of which are still considered taboo and can lead to embarrassment and distress. Services provided by stoma nurses are therefore much valued, as we have heard today, by those receiving them.
I am aware that the employment of some specialist nurses is funded by some manufacturers of stoma products to support patients in hospital and in their own homes. That can also lead to concerns, which have been so well set out today, about potential conflicts of interest. Although I recognise the potential for conflicts of interest, my hon. Friend will forgive me if I repeat the code of professional conduct that he mentioned, because it is relevant to this point, and I will mention why it remains relevant.
The code states that nurses must ensure that their professional judgment is not influenced by any commercial considerations. Any concerns about professional conduct are of course within our framework of regulation of professional groups, which is a matter for the Nursing and Midwifery Council. As a result of my hon. Friend securing this debate, I have made further inquiries of the NMC and the Royal College of Nursing, asking whether they are aware of any concerns being raised. The answer was no. I suspect my hon. Friend would say that that is because they are not reviewing and monitoring this matter either.
I will follow up on the report published some years ago by the RCN, which my hon. Friend mentioned, because although it is a little bit out of date it clearly speaks to some of the issues that he talked about. I will go further than that, because officials have had discussions of the sort mentioned by my right hon. Friend, in his response to my hon. Friend’s letter of November 2010, with suppliers and trade associations on sponsorship. I understand that one prominent trade association, the British Healthcare Trades Association, is discussing the industry’s views with its members. We have yet to receive the final feedback on those issues from the industry. I hope that, through this debate, we can ensure that we get that response, because the Department will certainly want to see it.
The BHTA code of practice—another code of practice—for health care and assistive technology products and services states:
“No pressure must be exerted on the sponsored individual to favour the sponsoring company’s products over any other. At all times the products supplied should be that which the professional considers is best suited to the client’s needs.”
Clearly, the trade bodies themselves recognise that potential risk and have identified it in their own codes of conduct with regard to their members.
On localised formularies and tendering, I am sure my hon. Friend is aware of the pressures facing NHS organisations as a result of our ageing population, and the increased diagnosis and treatment of cancers that he mentioned. On top of that, the NHS obviously has to achieve the Nicholson challenge of £20 billion of efficiency savings by 2015 through a focus on quality, innovation, productivity and prevention. Every saving made from that is being reinvested in patient care to support front-line staff. As we move forward, it is very important that NHS procurement is undertaken at national, regional and local level via the NHS supply chain, regional collaborative procurement organisations and individual trusts. Some NHS organisations may also use formularies to form the basis of a recommended list of products for prescribers, which is intended to provide a sufficient range of choice to meet the clinical needs of most patients. They may also run tenders to acquire local supply of these products. Local formularies or tenders are generally prepared by multi-disciplinary teams and reflect, as far as possible, best clinical practice.
I understand the concern that the hon. Gentleman has about choice and I appreciate the importance that stoma patients often place on continuing to receive a product in which they have confidence. We want to ensure that patients are at the heart of the clinical decisions that are being made about them, which is one of the reasons that we want to see a wide range of products available through the drug tariff to meet different needs of individual patients. However, and it is important that I stress this, any local arrangements of the sort that the hon. Gentleman has described do not override the clinical judgment of the GP who is still free to prescribe products listed in part IX of the drug tariff to meet specific needs of patients. Any decisions to undertake local procurement activity rest with local NHS organisations—primary care trusts now, clinical commissioning groups in the future—and we expect them to act in accordance with the principles when they are exploring the opportunities for tendering.
When it comes to patient choice, we want to go further than that. As part of our commitment to this policy of any qualified provider, we identified continence services as a good candidate for the approach. We felt that the competition should be on quality and not on price.
Jonathan Evans
Before the Minister concludes his remarks, let me again raise one question in relation to sponsored nurses. He referred to the code of professional conduct, which places the onus on the nurse. Nurses have to exercise independence of thought while knowing that their salary is being met by a commercial sponsor. Is it not the case that the position of those nurses would be enhanced if the Government were to ensure that there was a robust arrangement for the management of conflicts of interest, which manufacturers knew existed, rather than leaving all the onus on the nurses themselves? That is placing too much on them and not ensuring that the public are satisfied that we have the same processes for requiring management of conflicts that we require in other public policy areas.
Paul Burstow
The Government recognise that sponsored nurses provide a valued service. We have heard that very well expressed in this debate. There is a potential for conflict of interests. There are codes that provide a framework in which those decisions should be made. My hon. Friend has presented very clearly his concern on behalf of a range of patient groups that that is not working as well as it needs to. We have already indicated our desire to engage with the trade associations and we need to carry that through to its conclusions. We are looking forward to the response of the trade associations. I would certainly be happy to give further thought to the points that my hon. Friend has made during this debate. Our reforms are very much about ensuring that conflicts of interest are identified, managed and transparent. I hope that, as a result of this debate, we have brought this issue to this Chamber in a way that is very helpful so that we can move it forward after today.