Care Bill [HL]

Baroness Cumberlege Excerpts

Tuesday 4th June 2013 Lords Chamber

The noble Lords, Lord Hunt and Lord Warner, asked specifically about the training of managers. Health Education England will work with the NHS Leadership Academy, which supports the development of managers and will take an interest particularly in the development of clinicians as managers. We are the first to agree with the noble Lord, Lord Warner, that managerial skills in the new NHS, as in the past, will be crucial if we are to deliver what we all want, which is a health service that is efficient, effective and delivers good outcomes for patients.

[Baroness Cumberlege]

Perhaps I may comment on what my noble friend has said in reply to the debate. I understand that under secondary legislation he is considering putting a registered nurse on the board. Some assurance on that would be very helpful. In my experience working with clinical commissioning groups, when they were appointed there had to be a nurse on the board, and the last person to be appointed in many cases was the nurse. There was a feeling that it was hard to find a nurse who would make such a contribution. Some very talented young nurses are coming on-stream, but when one talks about a clinical presence on a board, so often, it is interpreted as a medical person on the board. We seek to ensure that a working nurse will be on those boards. If my noble friend can reassure me that he will consider that very carefully when drawing up the regulations, I will be very pleased.

I am so sorry. I should have declared an interest. My interests are on the Lords’ Register.

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I listened with care to my noble friend, whose experience we respect greatly. I can tell her that Health Education England’s board will need to have access to a cross-section of clinical expertise, as it does at the moment. Nursing representation will of course be very important. I assure her that we will prioritise that issue in developing the supporting regulations on membership. That is probably as far as I can go, but I recognise the force of everything that my noble friend said.