Urgent and Emergency Care Recovery Plan

Debate between Baroness Blower and Lord Markham

Thursday 2nd February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I thank my noble friend. As I mentioned just now, retaining doctors is critical, and pensions are a key issue. We had an excellent debate on this a couple of weeks ago. Again, we are working on all of that with the Treasury. However, as I said then, the simplest thing is that, while I understand the Treasury’s concern about making special rules for special groups and the potential knock-on from that, we can very quickly make sure that, if people are hitting that pension ceiling, they can get the equivalent pay in their pay package very quickly. As a health department we have the ability to do that, to make sure that no one is financially losing out from that. If it does not make sense for them to get it through their pension, they can get it through their salary instead. I am not saying that that is perfect, and more work needs to be done across the Treasury, but we can do that quickly.

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister has attempted to give a full response on this. However, there is clearly an absolute urgency about the workforce plan, and noble Lords would have been very pleased to have heard something rather more specific about the date on which it would come before us. If it is in draft, perhaps he could go back and say, “Can we speed up the final drafting of it?” The Minister also used the word “realistic” on a couple of occasions. Can he say whether he understands that the workforce plan will not be realistic unless we can pay staff in an appropriate way to make sure that we can hold on to their services, without which any attempts to remedy the difficulties we are facing are, frankly, a forlorn hope? Finally, on virtual wards, can we make sure that there are not people in the digital divide having difficulty engaging with the virtual ward if they have broadband problems and other problems?

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness. Taking those questions in reverse order, yes, it is understood that virtual wards do not work for everyone. At the same time, I am constantly surprised by the data: for instance, the average age of an NHS app user is in the mid-60s—so it is not a particularly young demographic who use this. Obviously, the examples I have seen, particularly on COPD at Watford, show that an older population is using that. However, we absolutely need to make sure that there is not a digital divide from that.

On the noble Baroness’s points on the workforce, she is quite right. We live in a competitive market, and one of the benefits of full employment is that, again, most people who want to work have a job, but one of the downsides is that there is competition for jobs. We have to face up to those realities and be realistic in terms of workforce, in that if you are going to attract and retain the good people, which you need to have as the bedrock of your services, you need to make sure you have an attractive and rewarding place to work. Clearly, that has to be a feature.