Health and Social Care Bill

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, I have amendments in this group and in light of the previous debate I do not want to repeat anything, except that the Minister stressed the importance of driving up quality and these amendments relate to what should be incorporated in a licence that Monitor gives a provider. Amendment 282ZB is replaced by Amendment 282ZC, which is about being a good employer. If you are going to drive up quality you have to make sure that your staff have education and training and understand research. However, it goes right the way through from every provider at every level, right up to specialist training. It is important that the education and training needs of those who are in the higher professional training bands are also accounted for. Monitor will have to work closely with Health Education England to provide an oversight of the numbers of education and training places available.

The background to this amendment is very compatible with Amendment 278BA tabled in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Ribeiro, who is not in his place but has already spoken to it. The amendment should not have any great implications on the levy and I note that the Government are already committed to undertaking extensive work to establish an appropriate NHS training levy. I suggest, however, that supervision and training of all staff at all levels is essential and I hope the Minister can confirm that licensing will go further than simply, as it states on the face of the Bill at the moment, having regard to education and training.

In Clause 93, Monitor is required to publish draft standards conditions for the licence requirement and Amendment 285ZA, in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Hollins, requires somebody to state what primary medical services are to do. If Monitor is not to do it, I respectfully ask the Minister who is. What is to be their availability? How will they work with pre- and post-hospital care? A reappraisal and revalidation will look at clinical standards but there are real difficulties if more goes out into the community. Who is going to see patients with complex conditions at home, how are the deficits in out-of-hours care to be driven up and who is responsible for what? It also requires a duty of collaboration, because if you do less in the hospital sector you need to increase your collaboration, not decrease it.

We have already debated the importance of staff being involved at local and national level to work for the benefit of the wider NHS. As background to this amendment, may I give a short example of why integration between primary and secondary care and social care is absolutely essential? Take a child who the nursery, perhaps, reports is behaving oddly. The general practitioner refers the child to paediatrics, they consult their developmental colleagues—speech and language therapists and psychologists—and an overall conclusion is that this child is neglected but also has some pathology, such as glue ear and delayed speech. The child comes from a home in which there are no books and no one is talking to him or her. For the GP and all other services to link there must be integrating care; that is why it is stressed in the context of this amendment.

The last amendment in this group in my name is Amendment 287AA, which relates to indemnity. Currently foundation trusts carry vicarious liability for clinical care provided by their staff and therefore need to cover claims arising from this work. The trust can seek a source of indemnity from providers other than the NHS Litigation Authority but does not have to and does not have to publish whether or not it does.

The Medical Defence Union has already questioned the indemnity of any qualified provider with the Department of Health and had a response outlining that the NHS standard contract requires providers to have indemnity with a specific requirement set by local commissioners. The levels would vary according to the circumstances of different providers. But that response misses the point. I am not suggesting that the Bill should set the level of indemnity, but we should ensure that all providers of care to NHS patients have indemnity in place so that patients do not go uncompensated. The indemnity should be adequate and appropriate and this cannot be done under separate rules or regulations. The concern is that if a contractor goes out of business for whatever reason and does not have appropriate ongoing indemnity, there will be no course of redress for patients who have been harmed by that individual contractor.

There is a real prospect that patients who are severely or negligently damaged by an individual who does not carry adequate indemnity would then be completely unable to gain compensation because the way that the Bill is written does not require there to be adequate indemnity for the service provided. The long-term nature of clinical indemnity claims means that the level of indemnity must be adequate to provide compensation, sometimes many years into the future when a claim is settled or because sometimes the harm done does not emerge for some years. An indemnity, therefore, has to be in place when a provider is no longer in existence.

I will not elaborate any further on this because it is a discussion I would be interested in having with the Minister outside the Chamber and I am aware that we are time-restricted for this group of amendments, but I hope that the Minister will be able to consider the importance of indemnity for those providers that contracts are placed with and even for those they may sub-contract to.

House resumed.