Health and Care Bill

Debate between Baroness Finlay of Llandaff and Baroness Thornton

3rd reading
Wednesday 23rd March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I hate myself for this, but I forgot two people. Half way through the Bill, we acquired a new advisor, Liz Cronin, who has done an excellent job, and there is Richard Bourne, who has been sat by my side, right through the Lansley Bill and this one. They have my thanks.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

From these Benches, I very briefly thank the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, the noble Earl, Lord Howe, the whole Bill team and all the officials who have worked with them for the way that they have listened—repeatedly listened—as we made our points over and again and as they sought sometimes to try to understand what we were trying to get across and why. I also thank everyone across the House, on all the Opposition Benches, the Cross Benches and the Government Benches, who have worked with us as Cross-Benchers in a very collaborative way and made their own offices available for background support to all of us.

I echo the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton: this Bill leaves us better. It has been a genuine pleasure to work on it. Some of us have worked on previous Bills, and I have to say that this was a more enjoyable and rewarding experience because the dialogue involved a better interchange at many points.

We have made some points of great significance, one of which was over palliative care, which has been dear to my heart. Palliative care has come of age. I think the House will be pleased to know that, on Friday morning, the annual meeting of the Association for Palliative Medicine has a specific session dedicated to understanding the changes and what it now needs to do in the light of those. The word goes fast from here, and that is very welcome.

I hope that I have not forgotten anybody in my thanks, which are open and sincerely expressed.

Health and Care Bill

Debate between Baroness Finlay of Llandaff and Baroness Thornton

Committee stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Tuesday 11th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I must declare an interest, because a lot of the outcome measures that are now used are in place at Cardiff University. I will expand a little on and support what my noble friend Lord Patel said about outcome measures, particularly for something such as cancer. That is in part because the disease process itself is marching on all the time. It is different from many other diseases, where there might be a chronic condition and other things happen as a result of it. If you do not intervene rapidly with some cancers, you miss the boat and go from being able to cure it to a situation where you certainly will not be able to.

The other group of outcome measures that I do not think we should forget has just now been developed: family-reported outcome measures. That is the impact on the family. We know about the number of carers that there are. There are child carers and many unpaid carers. Having somebody in the family with a disease process, waiting for something to happen and seeing that disease process getting worse and worse in front of their eyes, has a major impact on the health of others and stacks up problems for the future in the health service.

That is why, when I was on the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Cancer, I strongly supported John Baron in all his efforts to look at the one-year survival times in cancer. Looking at outcomes can be far more informative than looking simply at process targets, which is what we have been looking at too much to date rather than looking at the overall impact of disease.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 7 and 9 in my name. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, for introducing this debate and I look forward to supporting the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. I think we are about to see harmony breaking out between the four walls of the Chamber. The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, and I are I think in accord over these amendments.

Historically, the mandate is part of the attempted change—I think that is probably the right way to put it—to distance the role of government and Ministers from the sound of bedpans dropping, if I might put it like that. Unfortunately, as the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, said, despite the mandate’s intentions, recent Ministers have still tried to micromanage and otherwise interfere with NHS managers. During the passage of the 2012 Bill, the Government had to concede that the Secretary of State remained politically responsible to Parliament for the NHS.

I think it would be fair to say that laying the mandate before Parliament in each year, as was intended, has not brought about energetic debates and wise reflections in either House of Parliament. But the mandate is not without merit. It is good that the NHS knows what is expected of it and should be free from sudden announcements and other surprises. Without something of this nature, it is wholly unclear how accountability works. So we accept that, at least until the next reorganisation happens, there has to be a mandate, and the important thing is to get this right.

For that reason, we support the two amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. If anybody knows how the mandate ought to be used, it is definitely him. Trying to have clearly stated objectives in the outcomes framework, or some equivalent, and ensuring that the mandate is objective, evidence-based and publicly accountable must be correct.

Healthcare (International Arrangements) Bill

Debate between Baroness Finlay of Llandaff and Baroness Thornton

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 19th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, I shall briefly reply to the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly. I think the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, asked some very good questions and I looking forward to hearing the answers. These are genuine probing amendments to seek reassurance and understanding about the Bill. My noble friend Lord Foulkes and the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, spoke very well, so I do not intend to repeat their remarks.

I think I need to declare an interest as I have quite a large family in Cavan just the other side of the border in the Republic. They have asked me what I think is going to happen—not that I know the answer—and I imagine they are not alone among citizens of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland in asking those questions because, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, said, there is enormous cross-border traffic. We had a very useful briefing from the BMA, which firmly believes that continued access to medical care in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland is very important. Cross-border arrangements have been established. They provide high-quality care for patients in a range of areas which the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, mentioned, and it is important that those services are not destabilised during or after the Brexit process. We are seeking reassurance about some very practical issues regarding the treatment of children and other people in the Republic and in Northern Ireland.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, I support the amendments in this group. They go to the very heart of the human aspect of healthcare provision. If you have a sick child who needs to go to a cardiology clinic, you may well have other children, and you need to be able to look after all of them as well as focusing on the one who is sick. Anything that endangers the services that have taken years to set up and which are known to be working well will have a major downstream effect not only on individual patients but on all others in the family when you have cross-border flow.

When we talk about people who are already ill travelling, quite often they are going to major family events or reunions. They are not going just for the sake of having a nice holiday. To deny them the ability to travel because the cost of insurance is prohibitive or because they will not have reciprocal cover could have quite severe downstream effects on the mental health and psychological welfare of some of the people who have been affected by it. While these are probing amendments, they go to the heart of why we need to have things in place.

Healthcare (International Arrangements) Bill

Debate between Baroness Finlay of Llandaff and Baroness Thornton

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Tuesday 19th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

I should declare my interest as a past president of the BMA and a current BMA member, because I would like to refer to its brief on this. The BMA has indeed highlighted the potential problem, as the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, set out, of having 27 reciprocal arrangements all containing different terms. This will inevitably put pressure on front-line NHS staff, who will be expected to be familiar with and administer these different arrangements.

There is an additional problem that the association has highlighted, however: if the 190,000 UK state pensioners who are signed up to the S1 scheme and living in the EU need to return to the UK to receive care, health services will face drastically increased demands and costs. The Nuffield Trust has calculated that if those individuals return to the UK for treatment, that could incur additional costs to health services of between £500 million and £1 billion per annum, and require an additional 900 hospital beds and 1,600 nurses to meet demand. That is quite apart from the additional medical and allied healthcare professional staff, and all the clerical and managerial staff. The potential pressure on services, which are already stretched to bursting point, cannot be ignored.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, said, the difficulty is in how the money is recouped, where it goes and who can use it, as well as in accounting for it. While we are talking about cost recovery, I shall pick up on general practitioners. It is difficult to know where that money goes and to whom it is reported. If it is the clinical commissioning group, would it be expected to bill the person, who may well have disappeared from the UK by the time any such processes go through? Receptionists are not familiar with billing. The complexity of administering a multiple arrangement scheme cannot be ignored.

My final question goes back to one I have raised previously about the devolved Administrations. Given that there are now different healthcare systems in the four countries of the UK, each administered and managed slightly differently, what discussions have the Government had to date about recouping costs both as they stand and in the event of a large influx of pensioners currently living and receiving treatment abroad?

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I knew that the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, would make a very thorough job of moving this amendment, so I was not just being lazy but was making sure that the Committee got the best person to introduce it. The noble Baroness mentioned the BMA’s brief, to which I shall refer. While the amendment refers to NHS trusts, any funding incurred by primary care providers in administration of the new healthcare arrangements should also be met. As a member of a CCG, I think that probably means CCGs. That is quite important.

Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Finlay of Llandaff and Baroness Thornton

3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 11th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, I will very briefly add my thanks to the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, and the Bill team, for listening. I also thank everyone from outside who brought their own experience, either individually or as part of a professional group, a voluntary sector group or the care home sector. I thank personally those in the Welsh Government who arranged meetings for me and also brought expertise, coming from a different health service framework. That was important because this legislation must apply across England and Wales. So I add my thanks to others.

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, I hope this is the final remark. This is indeed the place where, as the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, said, we all say how wonderful we are; and I think we probably are. The Minister has set the homework that the Commons needs to undertake to get this Bill into even better shape; it needs to consider length of renewal periods, the interface with Simon Wessely’s review, the role of IMCAs, remaining conflicts of interest, impact assessments and implementation, and indeed, the issue of the definition of deprivation of liberty, which the Minister has undertaken to tackle. It also needs to discuss money, budgets and so on, as we have not done so during the passage of the Bill.

I have a few thanks to add to those of other noble Lords. First, I thank the organisations that have given us so much support during the passage of the Bill. If noble Lords cast their minds back to the summer, we were thrown into this Bill at very short notice, as were those organisations. I thank Mencap, VoiceAbility, Mind, the National Autistic Society, the Alzheimer’s Society and the Relatives and Residents Association. I must also mention Lucy Series at Cardiff University, who provided some fantastic briefing.

I thank colleagues from across the House who put things on hold over the last few months to respond to the challenge of this Bill. Indeed, the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, and I were exchanging emails while we were on holiday at the end of the summer. I thank the Minister and the Bill team for their work. I thank the Minister for listening and for always being available. If I am honest, I think that members of the Bill team might have been on a bit of a learning curve about how to deal with legislation in the Lords, but they eventually seemed to get it. We are much nicer here when it comes to dealing with Bills—but Bills are hard work for everybody involved. Finally, I thank my own team. In the Chamber I thank my noble friends Lord Hunt, Lord Touhig and Lady Wheeler, as well as my noble friend Lord Cashman for his support in the early days. Outside the Chamber I thank Molly Critchley and Bernadette Daly, who have been absolutely brilliant. We will meet our Commons team tomorrow to talk about what we think they need to do.

Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Finlay of Llandaff and Baroness Thornton

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 27th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, I declare an interest. Some years ago I was involved in helping the police prosecute people who were responsible for care but who were delivering terrible abuse in what was then termed an EMI home. A care assistant, encouraged and supported by her friend who worked on the domestic side, thought, “This wouldn’t be good enough for one of my relatives”. As we explored the cases, families in their statements commented on all they had noticed but said they did not feel able to raise concerns, let alone complain. They feared that their relative in the home would be victimised if they said anything or raised any questions. It was case records that revealed repetitive patterns of entry that gave the clues to support the statements that relatives gave to the police and provided evidence against those abusing these people, which led to a successful prosecution. The Minister has already said that the triggers for an AMCP review will be expanded. We look forward to working with him and officials on this. That should cover Amendment 76 when there is a dispute. Amendment 74 has, of course, fallen through pre-emption.

I shall focus on Amendment 76A, because it supports the whistleblower and ensures an independent review. Without that, we will fail those who need protection and leave whistleblowers with no option other than to stay silent and say nothing—or, if they can pluck up the courage, go to the CQC or the police, with all the disruption, expense and risk of losing their job that that involves. It would also mean a delay in alerting when things are not as they should be. The other amendments in this group concern other ways of triggering a professional expert review. I know that we have legislation designed to protect whistleblowers, but for domestics—cleaning and kitchen staff—and care assistants, who are often those who spend most face-to-face time with people, who need the job and may not be able to find alternative employment where they live, it takes enormous courage to say that things are not right. Sadly, it is more courage than many people can pluck up.

A Guardian report, published on Friday, cites examples of “terrible indignity and neglect” in for-profit care homes across the country. Whistleblowers have risked their jobs and livelihoods to report cases of,

“inappropriate and disproportionate use of physical restraint”,

on residents with autism, and carers failing to manage medicine safely. In this article, Eileen Chubb, founder of Compassion in Care—a charity that campaigns on behalf of whistleblowers for better levels of care—was quoted as saying:

“We have seen first hand the appalling consequences of poor care … company after company making millions whilst on the frontline vulnerable people are left without the basics to sustain life”.


Carers who break the silence surrounding abuse, such as the whistleblowers at the home cited, deserve protection.

Even if a care home is a good home and receives a good rating from a CQC inspection, relatives may visit only intermittently and may not be aware that the care that they think is being given to their relative just is not happening for them. They will not be aware of the minute-to-minute, hour-to-hour aspect of a person’s care. It is the staff there for hours on end who can benchmark that care. They may realise that the person has become increasingly withdrawn and increasingly less communicative, and perhaps cries at night and seems very unhappy. The staff must confidently be able to ask for a review without prejudice.

This amendment will play an important role in giving protection both for residents and for those who call for a review. It calls for a review because it is far less threatening for somebody who has a concern to be able to ask for an independent review from an AMCP who can come in and assess what is going on—they do not feel that they need the body of evidence to make an accusation of malpractice. That is why this should be in the Bill, even if all the other ways of triggering a review are consigned to the code of practice. I feel quite strongly that when staff feel that something is not right and want to say so but their seniors are not recognising it, they must have the ability to protect the cared-for person, because the cared-for person is so vulnerable. I beg to move.

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, right from the beginning of this Bill—at Second Reading and in Committee—concerns have been expressed across the House about how the interests of the cared-for person can be ensured through the process of using the AMCP when that person is at their most vulnerable and may not be articulate at all. The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, articulated exactly what we are saying. Amendment 76A, in my name and those of the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford, is an essential fail-safe that we believe needs to be in the Bill.

Like the Minister, we have sought across the House to prioritise the issues that we thought were most important for the cared-for person. I think we have come through rather well in improving this Bill together, and mostly without having to resort to Divisions. I hope that the Minister will accept Amendment 76A, because it is certainly in line with the aspirations that he has expressed to the House about safeguarding the cared-for person. If he is not prepared to do that, certainly on these Benches we hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, will seek the opinion and support of the House, because it is certainly there.

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[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

I am most grateful to the Minister for realising the seriousness of this issue and that our current whistleblowing policies are inadequate. I do not share his concern about vexatious reporting because if you got such reporting from a staff member, it would be pretty obvious pretty quickly. The review would have happened and if one person is better protected, it is far safer than many people being inadequately protected. I accept that my drafting—I am grateful to the Public Bill Office—may not be perfect and because the Minister will come back to this at Third Reading, we will have a meeting and then be able to bring back an amendment.

[Baroness Thornton]

May I seek clarification from the Minister? He said that he would come back to Amendment 76A. Is this about Amendment 76 or Amendment 76A?

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

It is Amendment 76A.

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[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, I support the amendment. I would like to put an illustrative example before the House, although I know this is Report so I will be very brief. I heard recently about someone who had sustained a head injury, living in a place where he received care, who got very aggressive whenever people suggested that he should attend to his own personal hygiene or tidy up. Any type of reasoning or persuasion completely failed. The solution was not to restrict what he did at all but rather just to walk in, put a vacuum cleaner in the room and go out again. He seemed to then go into an automatic mode of vacuuming, cleaning up, tidying up and then washing, and everything was sorted, including his personal hygiene.

I mention that because it is important for us to realise, when we are thinking of restrictive options, that sometimes you need to be imaginative to find the least restrictive option for people. Letting people out a certain amount can be far more effective than being so risk-averse that you limit what they can do.

[Baroness Thornton]

Yet again, the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, brings us a helpful example. I put my name to the amendment and we support it. It is part of a suite of amendments about keeping the cared-for person as far as possible empowered to make their own decisions, which must be intrinsic to the Bill. The amendment would ensure that the least restrictive method is always used.

Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Finlay of Llandaff and Baroness Thornton

Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Wednesday 21st November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I should like to comment on these amendments. Before I do that, I thank the Minister on behalf of everyone for listening, as well as for his willingness to meet Peers and to move on the things that had caused enormous concern to many of us.

I have a couple of concerns regarding these amendments. I commend the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, for trying to get us back to a definition. I completely agree that if we do not have a definition, the matter will go to court and we will end up back in a circle that we do not want to be in. The problem I see is the non-negligible period, which will be really difficult to define. If somebody is in a confined space for even 10 minutes or a quarter of an hour, that could be absolutely terrifying for them and completely unjustifiable. We have a difficulty in trying to use time as a measure, but I understand why it is there as well.

In his amendment, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, certainly includes the principle of consent, which means that there should be information that the person has capacity and that their care and treatment are voluntary. I was a little worried, however, that his proposed new paragraph 2(1B)(d) in the amendment, which would require two clinicians to confirm in writing, rather ran counter to the principles set out in Part 1 of the Mental Capacity Act itself, Section 1(2) of which states:

“A person must be assumed to have capacity unless it is established that he lacks capacity”.


It almost turns itself on its head if you must have somebody to verify that they have capacity.

I note that in his letter to us, the Minister stressed the importance of supporting liberty as much as possible and valid consent wherever possible. Would the Minister be prepared to say that we can work on this between now and Third Reading? If we can reach a definition that seems right by then, we will have done the whole community a great service.

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, for bringing forward the amendments. I can see that the Government have a decision to make about which way to go on them.

Listening to the Joint Committee on Human Rights is always a good idea. We discussed a statutory definition during the previous stage of the Bill, when the Minister repeated that he,

“should like to take some time between now and Report to consider the opinion expressed by noble Lords and in the report of the Joint Committee about the benefits of a statutory definition”.—[Official Report, 5/9/18; col. 1849.]

I understand why the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, is thanking the Minister already but it may be slightly premature. I know what she means, but let us wait until the end of the next day and a half. It is important that the Minister shares with us now where that thinking has led him.

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[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, I, too, have put my name to this amendment. My noble friend Lady Meacher has laid out very clearly some of the problems and conflicts of interest that can arise. One of the difficulties is deciding which will be the responsible body. If the place where somebody is treated is quite a long way from whoever commissioned their care, it can create real problems for a local authority or a clinical commissioning group, which might be funding outside the range of common care for somebody to be some distance away. That is why we have to decide which is to be the responsible body, and that responsible body must take those responsibilities seriously. The advantage of the responsible body being a designated NHS trust is that the private hospital is likely to have consultant-level staff who are likely to have an NHS contract somewhere at another trust, which may be nearby, or if they are part of a specialised group they will be subject to a degree of oversight, appraisal and so on within that specialist area. They are less likely to have local GPs who would be answerable to clinical commissioning groups. One just does not know. They have to go to one or the other. The most dangerous of all would be to have what one might term a mixed economy of a responsible body in some situations and a clinical commissioning group or local health board in another.

In Wales, things are a little different because the local health board covers the hospital sector and the community, so we have clearly defined geographical boundaries with much easier lines of answerability. My feeling is that we need to plump for one. I hope that the Government will, and I can see that there may, on balance, be advantages in saying the designated NHS trust is the responsible body.

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, I shall speak to my amendment, which is in this group. The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, said that the Government need to opt for something here to solve this problem. Mencap, in particular, and VoiceAbility have been very exercised by this because, as noble Lords have said, there is a conflict of interest when an independent hospital can be responsible for authorising deprivation of liberty for people in the hospital for the purposes of assessment and treatment of a mental disorder. My amendment names the CCG or local health board as the responsible body to remove that conflict of interest.

Since the Winterbourne View learning disability abuse scandal in 2011, the Government have been trying to reduce the number of people in these settings but, it must be said, largely without success. There remain 2,350 people with a learning disability and/or autism in these settings who in many cases could, with the right support, be in the community, but half of them are in independent hospitals. The independent hospital sector is expanding—to the horror, it must be said, of very many people. The average cost of a placement in an assessment and treatment unit for people with a learning disability is £3,500 a week. It can be as high as £13,000 a week. The average stay is of five and a half years. This is really not acceptable. Many noble Lords may have seen the excellent piece by Ian Birrell in the Mail on Sunday—not a newspaper I would normally read—which looked at the companies and the significant profits they make from these very lucrative contracts. The article details two giant US healthcare companies, a global private equity group and a Guernsey-based hedge fund, as well as two British firms and a major charity. The point is that these bodies are responsible for deprivation of liberty, and that can neither be acceptable, nor indeed what the Government intended. The Minister needs to provide us with some solution to this problem.

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[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

I endorse the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, in moving this amendment. One of the reasons that it should be in the Bill is that we have been trying to have the cared-for person at the heart of our deliberations, and the wording here is completely compatible with other parts of the Mental Capacity Act.

There is a terrible tendency when people look at the least restrictive option to also think about what might be convenient for them. The least restrictive option might not be the easiest, and might mean that staff have to behave in quite a different way. By wording these two amendments in this way, we are looking at the risk of harm to the person specifically, and are keeping the person at the heart of this. There always will be a risk that decisions will be contested in court and will need to go to court, and an application to the court may be judged specifically against that test, because it is in the Bill. If it is in the code of practice, there is a real danger that it could be downgraded.

[Baroness Thornton]

I put my name to this amendment, and we on these Benches very much support the intention behind the amendments in this group.

I bow to the fact that the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, has lived and worked with this for a very long time indeed, has reviewed the Mental Capacity Act and was very influential in the way it was formed. There has been a lot of discussion with stakeholders about this group of amendments and how we can best express “necessary and proportionate” in a way that will strengthen the Bill and prevent harm to the cared-for person. These amendments do that, providing clarity. Again, as I mentioned in the previous debates, because this is to do with protection and powers, it has to be in the Bill and not the code of practice. I hope that the Minister will agree to the amendments, because it is probably the best way forward, and that he will end this discussion in harmony and agreement.

Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Finlay of Llandaff and Baroness Thornton

Committee: 3rd sitting - (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 22nd October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton]

The amendment would reduce the maximum time for which an individual can be held in detention without renewal from three years back to 12 months. The Bill would allow responsible bodies to renew an authorisation of deprivation of liberty in some cases for up to three years, while simultaneously reducing the safeguards that a renewal process would require. The amendment would shorten that three-year period to a maximum of 12 months.

Why is that important? Tripling the potential length of an authorisation period to three years creates a stark difference between the Mental Capacity Act and the Mental Health Act, apart from anything else, and moves away from best practice in other countries. Paired with the new LPS renewal process, which weakens safeguards designed to prevent lengthy detentions, a three-year authorisation will be likely to face legal challenge.

At its core, the new LPS system is intended to safeguard vulnerable people who have been deprived of their liberty on mental capacity grounds. The possibility of a three-year period of detention with limited safeguards gets the balance wrong between safeguarding vulnerable individuals and the desire to reduce the bureaucracy of the system.

Strasbourg case law confirms that a lawful deprivation of liberty for the purposes of Article 5(1)(e) of the ECHR must include both “limits in terms of time” and “continuing clinical assessment of the persistence of a disorder warranting detention”. Therefore, in order to comply with Article 5, any system must contain, first, a provision for the termination of the authorisation after the maximum time has expired and, secondly, an ability to terminate an authorisation before the time limit has expired if the deprivation of liberty is no longer necessary.

A three-year renewal limit is likely to pose problems for responsible bodies, especially in cases concerning conditions such as learning disabilities, acquired brain injuries and other non-degenerative mental impairments. The courts are likely to intervene to interpret those paragraphs concerning renewals—paragraphs 27(a)(ii), 28(b)(ii) and 29(1)(b)—as narrowly as possible. Capacity assessments are time specific, and a three year-old capacity assessment cannot be relied on as accurate evidence for detention. Therefore, we propose to reduce the three years to 12 months.

It is notable that a 2017 paper comparing mental health legislation in five different jurisdictions—Canada, Australia, Scotland, the Republic of Ireland and England and Wales—states that renewal orders vary in different jurisdictions,

“with the time periods for subsequent orders being longer in duration up to a maximum of 12 months, except in Ontario (3 months) and Victoria (6 months)”.

The Law Commission states that a three-year period should be considered only in the context of robust safeguards and constant review. Given the weakening of the safeguards throughout the rest of the Bill, it would be inappropriate to triple the length of time for which an authorisation can last.

In his opening remarks on the Bill, the Minister stated:

“It is essential that the system afford the necessary protections for the most vulnerable people”.—[Official Report, 16/7/18; col. 1061.]

The Bill as currently drafted would in this respect not deliver that protection. I beg to move.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, I have three amendments in the group designed to remove any ambiguity about authorisations, in that an authorisation would fall if it partly fell—in other words, if the person’s condition had either improved or changed to such an extent that the plan in place was no longer applicable, even in part, that would warrant a complete review. I accept that it would have to be a light-touch revision, because some things might not have changed, but I am not comfortable with simply allowing it to be reviewed and people to say that these parts of the condition no longer apply.

Amendment 58C is to stress the need for evidence to be supplied to support statements. I hope that the Minister will be able to provide me with some assurance. That evidence might come from photographs, video recordings of behaviour or whatever. That may be quite different to the written word. I worry that one person’s observed written word may not adequately portray a picture, particularly where the cared-for person has become withdrawn. Someone might interpret that as their being compliant, when actually they may be deeply unhappy. A broader direct recording of the person could be helpful.

I tabled Amendment 62A because I was concerned that the care home manager might be in the process of arranging for adaptations to be made to meet the cared-for person’s needs in line with that person’s wishes and feelings, and that the Bill’s wording does not provide enough flexibility to consider the arrangements to meet the individual’s needs.

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[Baroness Thornton]

Amendment 83 concerns the power of attorney and restrictions on it. This amendment comes from Clause 3 of the Law Commission’s draft Bill. I said right from the outset that in Committee we would test the Bill against those issues that the Law Commission had decided to put into the draft Bill and ask why they had been dropped. Many of them are absolutely at the heart of the safeguards that are necessary for vulnerable and cared-for people. The amendment would insert a new section into the Mental Capacity Act, which expressly prevents,

“a donee of a lasting power of attorney or a deputy”,

appointed by the Court of Protection from consenting on a person’s behalf,

“to arrangements which give rise to a deprivation of … liberty”.

This is the position in the current law but this statement makes it explicit. I beg to move.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, I have three amendments in this group, which are there simply because the topic is lasting power of attorney. I do not have an argument with Amendment 83 at all. It is absolutely right that the person’s best interests must be considered and that someone cannot just give consent on their behalf.

The amendments that I have tabled are designed to solve three current problems that we have with lasting powers of attorney. The first, Amendment 83ZA, relates to the identity documentation that somebody must produce to show that they are the donee of a lasting power of attorney. These are bulky papers which have to be registered and stamped by the Office of the Public Guardian, and then produced. For many people who are donees, those papers may be at their home; that may be a long way away from wherever the cared-for person—the donor—is. When that donor has lost capacity, the donee can either carry the sheaf of papers around with them all the time or just hope to be going via their home filing cabinet to pick them up before they go to see the person.

I hope that we might move toward something a bit more modern in electronic identification—something like the driving licence, which is a small card on which you can have a registration number. You could also have a picture of the donor as well as one of the donee, which would allow a second layer of recognition. That would also, I hope, focus the mind on the fact that the donor must be at the centre of all the decision-making. Its validity could easily be checked against a number, so that if it had been updated—and for some reason the previous form had not been returned—a simple check with the Office of the Public Guardian might verify its status.

Amendment 87G is designed to solve another problem that has been arising: that a person may appoint several people to hold their lasting power of attorney in the event that they lose capacity. However, as time goes on it has happened that they lose confidence in one of those people, for whatever reason. Maybe there is a dispute in the family or they feel that the person is no longer able to take a decision in their best interest, for whatever reason, and they want to revoke having that person as a donee. The problem is that it is quite a complicated process and they have to go back to square one. This amendment is designed to make it much easier for them to state that they no longer want one person listed but they want the others to remain. I have discussed this with the Public Guardian, who sees it as a problem at the moment that the revocation of a donee is difficult.

Amendment 87E arises out of a problem which is also beginning to occur. I should declare an interest here because it is a problem that is close to my heart: a member of my family has severely impaired capacity and her spouse, who is the only person who can act on her behalf, is becoming older. There is concern about what happens if he cannot act on her behalf and take decisions. At the moment, it is only when the donee loses capacity that others can go to the Court of Protection for a court-appointed deputy. The aim of this amendment is to allow the donee to make some provision so that, in the event of their losing capacity—either temporarily if they have a fall with a fracture, a head injury or have pneumonia, or permanently so they become frail and possibly demented—they can make provision ahead of time in the cold light of day. The alternative is the family, with one family member who lacks capacity and the person who was taking care of their affairs now acutely ill and in crisis, having to go to the Court of Protection to get a court-appointed deputy, which can take some time.

I have discussed this with the Court of Protection, which wants to be helpful in moving things forward, and with Alan Eccles, the Public Guardian, who is extremely sympathetic to the problem and can see that people who took out a lasting power of attorney, or prior to that an enduring power of attorney, and never expected to live as long as they have could now find that the donee is at greater risk of becoming frail than they anticipated. Donors are outliving their prognosis not just by months, but by years and possibly decades.

Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Finlay of Llandaff and Baroness Thornton

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 15th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton]

I hate to interrupt the Minister, but I think he might be answering the next group of amendments. I am not sure—perhaps he is answering both groups together—but it feels as though he is answering a speech I have not yet made.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

I would like to intervene for a moment as I think this has been a valuable debate, even though short. I shall pick up on the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, on conditions, which are incredibly important. She cited one example, and I return to the musician to whom I referred earlier. Most professional musicians will feel that their instrument is an integral part of their own personality. If they lose speech, they will communicate through their instrument, especially their mood—their feelings, responses and so on—so it is a terrible deprivation of liberty to separate a musician from their instrument.

If the musician plays a trumpet or another loud instrument and they are in a care home, it will be important to find somewhere they can go to play their instrument without disturbing everybody else. It sounds humorous but it is incredibly important to people. I was struck when I visited a care home some time ago and saw a man playing a piano. I thought he was a volunteer brought in to play—beautifully—to people. When he finished playing, I started to engage in conversation with him and it became clear that, while his recall for the symphony he had been playing from memory was superb, he could recall or discuss remarkably little else from which I could gain a modicum of sense. As a result, we had a bizarre conversation, other than about the symphony.

Conditions are absolutely essential. My hope would be that, in the code of practice, we require conditions to be put into the care plan that must be enacted on a daily basis. This should not be just a set of recommendations that could be ignored. My concern is that we link care planning to the delivery of care; that is extremely important.

I was grateful also for the support—albeit somewhat tentative—from the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler. I draw a distinction between the care manager and the care home manager. The care manager should be the person overseeing the direction of care planning; they could be the district nurse for somebody at home, or whoever runs the supported living environment on a day-to-day basis and looks at alterations in the care plan.

In a large care home, the care home manager often manages the building and the staff. They make sure that regulations are maintained and that the lifts work, dealing with all the things that happen on a day-to-day basis, but can have remarkably little contact with individuals. I do not want to sound disrespectful to care home managers when I say that I would envisage their co-ordinating role as much more like that of an administrative secretary, rather than as somebody who gets information directly from the person or the family. However, I would want them to make sure that the family had been consulted, that all the people who cared about the person had been spoken to and that that information was properly documented, with a package being put together for the local authority to inspect. I believe that the local authority will know which care homes on their patch are working well and which need an eye to be kept on them. I think I have half given my response to the Minister’s response.

Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Finlay of Llandaff and Baroness Thornton

Monday 15th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, three amendments in this very important group are in my name. I fully support the stress being placed on the need to see whether, with additional help and support, the cared-for person could make their own decision. It is always better if they can take their own decision over any aspects of their care that need to be in place. For example, providing support to young people with learning difficulties or people with an expressive disorder may require special skills, time and patience to support them to make their own decision. However, the Mental Capacity Act is clear that every effort must be made to support people.

It is also right that the way in which support is provided, as well as the evidence for why such support may have failed, should be recorded—as in Amendment 23, which I strongly support. Decisions should be based on evidence as much as possible, not on the personal opinion of the assessor, although there will always be a degree of interpretation of evidence. For people in community and supported living settings, this will be important to stress as they may agree with and consent to certain aspects of the care plan but not understand others—so it is not an all-or-nothing. However, even if the person does not appear to understand, everything must be explained as fully and clearly as possible. It will be important for any such evidence submitted to support the deprivation of liberty to come from the professional responsible for the care plan, whoever that is.

We have already debated the role of the care home manager. For consistency, I have removed the care home manager from this part of the Bill. I should apologise to care home managers for my use of “secretary” in relation to their role, which could be misinterpreted. I did not mean to cause offence; I just wanted to make sure that we recognise that the care manager and the care home manager are often different people.

In response to the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, I would advise caution. In some situations, a specialist clinical psychologist may be better than a medical practitioner at undertaking the assessment. I would hate for us to end up with the view that the doctor would always be the best person to do the assessment because I do not think that they always would be; there may well be others.

I welcome the addition of speech and language therapists. They have a great deal to offer to people with expressive disorders and can often establish communication when other people think that the cared-for person lacks capacity but in fact they simply cannot express themselves.

[Baroness Thornton]

Yesterday or on Friday—whenever it was—we received a very helpful briefing from the Royal College of Psychiatrists. I found what it had to say on Amendment 22 very useful:

“The Royal College of Psychiatrists believes that only a ‘Registered Medical Practitioner’ should be able to determine whether an individual has a ‘disorder or disability of the mind’ … Currently the authorisation arrangements in Part 2 of the Bill say that a capacity and medical assessment has to be made, but does not say who has to make it. It is likely that the Government is assuming that this would be carried out by a ‘Registered Medical Practitioner’ but it would be helpful to have it on the face of the Bill.


The JCHR report was clear that in order to comply with human rights law, any deprivation of liberty under Article 5(l)(e) requires ‘objective medical evidence of a true mental disorder of a kind or degree warranting compulsory confinement, which persists throughout the period of detention’.


Given this requirement for ‘objective medical evidence’, there needs to be a guarantee in the Bill that only a Registered Medical Practitioner with appropriate training has the power to determine whether someone has an ‘unsound mind’ or ‘mental disorder’”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, unless training becomes mandatory on some level, the problem is that we will always train those who are willing to be trained while not reaching those who perhaps need to be trained more. If we could make training a little bit like fire training or manual handling, with very short bursts of realistic training, it might be much more effective. Over the years I have seen very costly, ineffective training and very low-cost extremely effective training. Often the most effective training includes a realistic assessment because assessment drives learning. I strongly support the comments made by my noble friend Lady Hollins because case-based training involving the people themselves has a huge emotional impact and therefore embeds change in the behaviours and attitudes to the person on the receiving end. On a slightly optimistic note, I am rather hoping that within Wales, we might manage to get an agreement that all doctors at every grade need at least a minimum awareness of the Mental Capacity Act and that we might then be able to build on that. I keep my fingers crossed.

The other point that we have to be careful of when we talk about training is that this is not about broadcasting information that might sound quite legalistic and frightening. One of the most important skills is listening, and listening skills have often failed in these cases, such as the ones referred to already in which the relatives were not listened to early on. They were not believed early on, the cared-for people were not adequately listened to and things spiralled down. Some of that lack of listening is just a result of poor communication skills training. I am not sure that we have to be overspecialised, but we need to raise the skills of everybody across the board. It needs to be embedded in revalidation—you might train somebody now, but in five years’ time there will be drift. The training, therefore—particularly if people are being trained to take on specific responsibilities—needs to be refreshed over time to ensure that it remains authentic.

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, this has been a very useful and essential discussion about training. The noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, is quite right that there needs to be a strategy. I am concerned that there does not seem to be a strategy, so can the Minister tell us what consultation there has been about how this training—even the minimal familiarisation—would be achieved? Even the Minister accepts that that is clearly not going to be acceptable.

In terms of the stakeholders, the MHA—a charity providing care, accommodation and support for older people throughout the UK—heard from a care home manager in Hereford, who said, “As home managers without a mental health nursing background, it would be impossible to expect a home manager to undertake these assessments, as with the continuing health assessments, which we are deemed unable to complete as we are not healthcare professionals”. Well, quite.

Age UK says that at present there are no fewer than six assessments for a DoLS application. In order for care home managers to be able to conduct these assessments—or indeed be party to them, if only to act as secretaries, as outlined by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay—they are going to need the requisite training.

The LGA point out that the Government should recognise the problems caused by these additional responsibilities and the financial pressures—as mentioned by my noble friend Lord Hunt—put on care homes by the provisions in the Bill, especially when the sector is already facing significant challenges in terms of both resources and workforce recruitment and retention.

Voiceability expressed its concerns about the new requirements on care home managers. It is concerned that this transfer of responsibility sets up potential conflicts of interest, which we have already discussed. Mencap says that there has to be significant consultation with the care sector about the implications of the new requirements on care home managers.

I am just wondering how we have got to this point in the Bill without that consultation having already taken place. We need to play catch-up because this is such an important area: not only are there funding implications, but we should not be expecting people who do not have appropriate skills to be carrying these responsibilities.

Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Finlay of Llandaff and Baroness Thornton

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 15th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords—

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords—

[Baroness Thornton]

You go ahead of me.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

I beg your pardon; I have an amendment in this group as well. Oh dear, I seem to have spattered them in every group.

I have a real concern that triggering a review that is based on whether or not the person is thought to be objecting is far too narrow, and that anyone who has concerns about that person should be able to trigger a review independently—whether that is family, friends or somebody working in the place where the cared-for person is supposed to be being cared for.

I have an interest, or at least an experience, to declare: some years ago I was asked to help the police look at a care home where they had serious and justified concerns. The alert had come from somebody working at an extremely junior grade within the care home, not from anybody senior or from a professional. Following that, I was asked to review the case notes in detail. The people concerned all had severely impaired capacity and, often, an inability to express themselves—but, by meticulously looking at the case notes, one could see trends, and when I mapped them against the staff off-duty rota the trends became clearer.

I am very concerned that, if we leave this just as it is written, we will not allow the very people who have contact, possibly on a day-to-day basis, to put up a red flag about what may be happening in one person’s life. It may be that nine out of 10 people in an institution are very happy, but if one of them is not and one member of staff has got to know them and sees subtle changes in their behaviour, that member of staff must be empowered, with the cover of anonymity, to trigger an independent review, because that may be the only way to protect the cared-for person.

I put in my amendment that a review should be triggered if,

“the rationale … is based on the risk to others”.

The concept of “risk to others” is quite difficult to justify being in this Bill rather than in the Mental Health Act as the sole rationale for using the Bill, so I think that it becomes an exceptional circumstance that warrants that type of review. Similarly, if the restrictions are on contact with named persons, I worry that there could be a bias from the staff towards the named person. When somebody is very upset, they may appear to be an aggressive or angry visiting relative and may be a bit more difficult to handle—but actually it may be that that is simply the way that they are expressing their anxiety and their emotions towards the person who is now deteriorating and want to do their best for them. I worry about excluding a close relative without great justification; it should not be undertaken lightly.

Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Finlay of Llandaff and Baroness Thornton

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 5th September 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, I have an amendment in this group that does not sit terribly well with the first two—but so be it. I will be brief. These attempts to define a deprivation of liberty are nobly submitted, but I worry about potential unintended consequences from the wording. I will not go through them in detail, but I hope that the Minister will assure us that this is something we can take away and look at. One difficulty is that one person’s imprisonment—a deprivation of liberty—might not be a deprivation of liberty to another, so this may be very personal in some aspects.

On Amendment 81 in relation to a “vital act”, I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, will take reassurance from me—I do not know whether the Minister will agree with this or not—that anything done must be in a person’s best interest. Part of that is that it is a benefit and not a burden—or it may be a burden, but the benefits outweigh the burden. That has to be a fundamental principle in clinical decision-making.

The reason I tabled Amendment 82, which relates to an urgent authorisation, is that, looking through, I was concerned about unintended consequences from the way the legislation was written. I could see two, possibly—but they may be misplaced anxieties. First, in a true emergency situation, as a consultant in emergency medicine said to me, you just get on and do what you have to do. You do not go and look at paperwork. So, in an emergency situation, you may have to restrict somebody’s liberty to do what you have to do, which is in their best interest. You do not do something that is not in their best interest—and the last thing we want to do is impose any more bureaucracy or paperwork.

So I suggest that, possibly in the code of practice and not in the Bill, it should be clear that an urgent authorisation is an authorisation to begin longer-term care, but in an acute situation, in a clinical decision, nobody would expect people to even begin this process until we get to about 48 hours. I say that because a clinical decisions unit will normally have people staying in it for under 24 hours, as they may even on an acute medical ward, before being moved to a longer-term in-patient unit where their longer-term care may be assessed. Of course, we have people who have a transiently impaired capacity because of illness and the treatment of that will restore their capacity, such as the diabetic whose diabetes is out of control through either hyperglycaemia or hypoglycaemia, and things such as hypocalcaemia as well. None of those should be included.

The concern at the other end was that an urgent authorisation could be used for example to take a confused person with advanced dementia where care at home had completely collapsed. Possibly their main carer at home had suddenly been admitted to hospital. They would then have to be moved into a nursing home placement at great speed, but that may not be what they want and they cannot consent to it. They would have to be moved to that place, be in a placement and be assessed there. There needs to be some time limit so that this cannot linger on for months or years, with somebody saying, “Oh, well, they are here under an urgent authorisation”, rather than a longer-term authorisation. That is why I tabled the amendment. I accept that it is not perfect, but I hope it is something we can look at. It may be that the code of practice can clarify those issues.

[Baroness Thornton]

I have added my name to the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, precisely because I thought we needed to have this discussion. That was exactly right. I would hate to choose between the two amendments, but this sets out when deprivation of liberty occurs:

“Arrangements that give rise to a deprivation of … liberty”,


are when the cared-for person is placed,

“under continuous supervision and control”,

they are “not free to leave” and the responsible body believes that it is in the cared-for person’s “best interests”. That is worth putting on the face of the Bill if at all possible.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights made a strong argument in favour of a statutory definition. I read its report and it seems absolutely right that that is what we should do. I would be interested to hear what one of the lawyers in our midst might have to say about this: whether they think that it would be a useful thing to do and whether the stabs we have made at it so far are helpful. We are interested in this discussion but we realise that this is the beginning of the discussion rather than something that may be appropriate right now.

When listening to the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, talking about her amendment, it occurred to me that this is one of those occasions when technology is important. When you have an emergency admission, you need to be able to input the name of the person into a PalmPilot, which will tell you whether a DoLS is already in place and whether a do not resuscitate order has been made. Recently I have had experience of exactly this situation with a family member. Because the information was not readily available in an emergency, we ended up where we did not want to be. I just add that to the debate because I know that the Minister and his boss are very interested in technology and its uses in the health service. This is another of those occasions where it might be useful.

Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between Baroness Finlay of Llandaff and Baroness Thornton

Wednesday 29th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, I did have a speech prepared in support of this amendment, based on the Welsh experience. However, after being woken by the “Today” programme telling me about a debate that we had not had—or that I thought I might have perhaps slept through—and announcing how the Government had responded in a way that I could not recall, I decided simply to bin my speech and live in hope. That is how we all are at the moment. We await the Government’s response to the amendments.

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, perhaps I may just say that when I was a Minister this was one of the few battles that I had and lost in the department. I shall be very glad if the noble Earl has had the battle and won—congratulations. I also say well done to all those who have been campaigning on this issue, particularly my noble friend Lady Gould.

Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between Baroness Finlay of Llandaff and Baroness Thornton

Wednesday 21st December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, I really am not trying to prevent Christmas starting for Members of this Committee. I feel as though most of today’s amendments have concerned me. These are probing amendments, which relate to NHS capital assets. They are designed to explore what happens to the current offices and clinical premises of an NHS body at the time of transition and afterwards. If these premises are occupied by a clinical commissioning group or a company that is advising a clinical commissioning group on its commissioning, who will become the owner of the property?

This is important because GPs are themselves independent contractors, not NHS employees. For many—not all but a significant number—the premises from which they work are owned by their practice. They, not the NHS, jointly own them, even though the building will usually have been subject to a range of capital improvement schemes from the NHS over many years. Such schemes allow a GP to purchase a practice and invest in it over the years. The capital gained then forms a significant additional pension pot for that GP.

My question for the Government concerns whether the deeds of the property will be transferred to the general practitioners of the clinical commissioning group. Will they be able to sell it for profit that would then be their personal profit? Will the profit revert to the NHS and, if so, to which pot? If property is transferred, will the new owner be liable to put capital gained into the capital part of the commissioning pot to develop service premises and equipment for the health service itself, rather than be able to take whatever capital gain there is on that property? I beg to move.

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, I just wish to add two questions of my own to the list that the noble Baroness asked. Has the Department of Health now resolved the issues around future asset ownership in respect of PCT and SHA estates? Within that, does that include LIFT schemes and PFI?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I hope I can answer the question of the noble Baroness very quickly. Clinical commissioning groups will be statutory bodies. They will be legally and operationally separate from GP practices. As such, if a clinical commissioning group occupies property that is under the ownership of that group, it will be under statutory ownership. It will not be open to GPs to sell such property at a cut price, or at any other price, to GP practices to enable such practices to pocket the profits. What the noble Baroness outlined sounded to me very much like embezzlement from the state. It will be no more possible for what she envisages to happen than for a primary care trust to sell a property and have its officers pocket the proceeds. I am a little mystified by the scenario that she has painted.

Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between Baroness Finlay of Llandaff and Baroness Thornton

Thursday 15th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

I put my name to these amendments, which are incredibly important. I hope that the Government’s response will be that they are listening and prepared to change this. It is worth noting that the Government’s response to Professor Sir Ian Kennedy’s report said:

“In the past, the NHS was not always set up to put the needs of patients and the public first. Too often patients were expected to fit around services rather than services around patients. Nowhere was this more the case than for children, young people and their families … If we are to meet the needs of children, young people, families and carers, it is vital that we listen to them in designing services, gather information on their experiences and priorities, provide them with the accessible information that they need to make choices about their care, and involve them in decision making”.

That is the Government’s own response to the report.

I also draw attention to the report from the ombudsman in Wales. I know we are going to debate ombudsmen later but I will make this one point. The ombudsman upheld a complaint that Health Inspection Wales,

“failed to seek the child’s perspective on her care”.

The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health is very concerned that “no decision about me without me” must extend to children and should involve both children and young people. Without that we will have poorer service planning and, as a result of that, poorer health outcomes. A voice for children and young people needs to be incorporated in the decision-making process of the NHS Commissioning Board, health and well-being boards and clinical commissioning groups, and a safe conduit for this involvement may be HealthWatch and local healthwatch.

I want to briefly draw the House’s attention to the fact that we have many young carers so it is not only children as patients that we need to consider. In the 2001 census it was found that there were 175,000 young carers and no one is disputing that those numbers have gone up significantly since then. A third of those are caring for somebody with mental health problems and the average age of young carers is 12 years old. Reading their comments, society clearly does not understand the pressures that they are under. There is evidence that when they get to school late, the school does not understand. When they try to accompany their parent to out-patient or even in-patient appointments, they are not listened to even though they have been providing all the care. The facilities where their relative is looked after are not appropriate for them to stay overnight. I remind the Committee that when a young parent is dying, the children will want to stay at the bedside. They may want to sleep in the same room. They do not want to be taken away. They may want to have a break; they may want to go out; they may want to watch a video. If we are really going to invest in quality of care and health outcomes for the next generation, and meet the Marmot review’s requirement for health inequalities not to be widened but narrowed, we must address the needs of this group in our population who provide a lot of care, who are incredibly important and who will be the citizens of the future, but to whom the system does not currently give a voice. To expect adults to be a voice for them is completely unrealistic, because, when they are a young carer, there is no other adult there apart from the person whom they are caring for.

I hope that these amendments will not be dismissed with a whole lot of reasons as to why they cannot be put into practice. If we are really committed to changing healthcare services for the population, we should listen to the voice of children and young people.

[Baroness Thornton]

My noble friend Lady Massey is, as usual, correct about these matters. I am always happy to take my lead from her. All my experience of working with NCH and lots of children’s organisations over the years, and, more recently, of talking to YoungMinds, leads me to think that this is a matter that the Government need to take into consideration.

Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between Baroness Finlay of Llandaff and Baroness Thornton

Tuesday 13th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, I start by congratulating noble Lords on making it through this day of debate. We are ending the day with this large group on failure, and the smaller group on pre-failure, tabled by my noble friend, in a moment or so.

In the NHS of 20 years ago, the trusts that got into problems were helped, although the help may have been brutal, with chief executives removed or moved on and nasty phone calls to trust chairs. The system gave powers of intervention from the Secretary of State through local strategic bodies, as they became. Financial help was grudgingly provided, usually for a recovery plan, sometimes delivered and sometimes not. The relationships were not defined by legal contract, and NHS contracts could not be enforced in the courts, so there was a system of arbitration within the NHS.

Those days have gone, and we now have an NHS as a network of many sub-organisations, some with linkages through real contracts. With FTs came the idea of a real contract, although in reality, of course, disputes are still sorted out long before reaching a court. We know that services, and even whole organisations, can fail as the impact of demographic, technological and behavioural changes shape our NHS. In reality, we have to deal with trusts that get into severe difficulties and may be technically insolvent, at which point a real organisation may not be allowed to trade. Then we have to accept that a whole trust might need to be shut down. Indeed, how should that be done? How should the continuity of services be maintained, how should the staff be dealt with, and how should the assets, most of which are owned by the state, be dealt with?

We know that this is the tail end of a bigger and important issue of reconfiguration. So how do we ensure that we can adapt services that show poor quality or that need to be delivered in different ways in different settings? Maybe, as with an increasing array of subspecialities, we have to accept regionalisation. Maybe we need network solutions. Is the market the way to do this? In other markets, innovations lead to changes in demand, and the organisations that cannot adapt close down. Is that what we want for our NHS?

Those who might be so inclined might like to wander through the delicate prose of Simon Burns MP in Committee in the Commons. He loves failure. The idea that you have competition is inextricably linked to having failure. It facilitates the market, brings in the innovators and drives out the inefficient. He believes that failure is a measure of market success, not failure.

It is true that in government we introduced a failure regime as we came to realise that, even after all the support and changes of management team, there may be organisations that are simply not viable. However, it is not so much that they were not viable; it is what that means, that continuing to support them is not giving value for the NHS, however much we adjust that value to include non-financial aspects. Indeed, we also wanted to bring out into the light the murky transactions used within the NHS to support organisations, through means such as brokerage loans. The tendency was for bad performers to be bailed out by the good—the opposite of a reforming system. The way NHS accounts were done also had to be changed to make this kind of smoke-and-mirrors accounting more open.

Issues around failure are more likely to operate at service level than at a whole-organisation level. To take a recent example, a well known and respected financial trust is having issues around its 18-week performance. Its general quality is good but it has signalled that it needs help, and it is indeed getting it from a Department of Health team. The question that we need to ask is: would this kind of support be available in the new world? Presumably, it would not; and even if it were, might that help be deemed anticompetitive? Would that good trust be allowed to fail? The link here to reconfiguration is inescapable.

We know and even admit in our rational moments that reconfiguration on a grand scale is what the Nicholson challenge is really about. The need to move services into community settings and to reduce dependency on the district general hospital model is widely recognised. However, we also know that reconfiguration is beset with political problems. In the run-up to the election, about one-third of constituencies had some kind of campaign to keep open a hospital, a surgery or whatever. One felt sometimes that even if there was no threat, one was invented. We had Andrew Lansley and David Cameron claiming that they would prevent any closures. I think that the Government are learning the hard way that promises made in opposition, especially during election campaigns, may turn out to be millstones when the real burden of decision-making passes to them. The examples of broken promises will continue as reconfigurations gather apace.

This is the issue to which our suspicions should be addressed. Is it part of the rationale to put the blame for nasty politically damaging decisions on others? This abdication of responsibility is characterised by the way that Ministers are trying to give away the key roles of the Secretary of State. This is in part a failure of process but is also a failure of leadership. The leadership should be accountable for delivering answers and necessary changes within a reasonable timescale. If we get reconfiguration right, the failure regime would look less necessary. This is far better for patients than the trauma of seeing their local facilities under constant threat or even being closed down. There are examples of where this has been done, and done well—and we need more of them.

In Committee in the Commons, the Conservatives in particular appeared to believe that these unpopular local changes would be less likely under the Bill—if changes in organisations are branded as failures, then those MPs would be well clear of any responsibility. In fact, we have years of evidence because every reconfiguration has to go through a clinical and management review at an early stage—so we know what works and what does not. We could use that evidence, rely on a robust process and stop opportunist politics. However, we know that the market will not bring about these changes any time soon.

In our NHS, the best interests of patients are served by good information that allows early intervention to improve failing services. CQC inspections are also of value in raising the prospect that poor services will be detected early. If you rely on competition, how long does it take for the public to react to the information that a service is bad and for them to choose to go elsewhere, or for that to impact on the finances to the extent that the service is closed down? In our view, using choice and competition to detect and close poor services takes too long and the cost for patients is indeed too high. That is what this suite of amendments aims to tackle.

The amendment sets licensing criteria to ensure that private providers meet standards around financial stability and probity. We need to supply regular financial information for the good providers. This is, in other words, a sort of Southern Cross test. Amendment 249MBA brings into effect the remaining inactivated arrangements for trust special administration from the 2009 Act, as amendments to the 2006 Act. I remember those well. Amendment 353ZZA is a commencement provision for that. Amendment 295 states that health special administrators must exercise their functions to “protect the interests of patients”. As to the Questions that Clauses 125 to 130 stand part of the Bill, this would create a regime for private companies that provide services to the NHS to have special procedures that augment the normal company provisions under the Insolvency Act. It arguably implies that we need stronger protection from the risk of private provider failure. It should be for the commissioners to factor in the risk of using private providers and contract to ensure that arrangements are in place for contingencies. The licensing regime needs to be tough enough to prevent Southern Cross-type failure through active monitoring.

Risk pooling is what the NHS does. We do not need new risk pools, with the costs that they involve. That is why we think that the clauses should be deleted. Clauses 131 to 143 inclusive allow Monitor to set up the regime to provide special administration for both private and public providers to levy charges on providers and commissioners and to manage the finances of a risk pool.

We argue that none of that is required; it just adds extra complexity and cost. Clause 170 is about FTs and failure. The clause removes the ability to deauthorise a foundation trust. We argue that that power should be retained, along with the recognition that some NHS provider trusts may need to be directly managed under the powers of the Secretary of State.

The new clause in Amendment 303ZA makes clear that the initial effort, in the context of failure, should be remedial action rather than going straight for a failure regime. My noble friend has a similar idea behind his amendment. On Amendment 303ZB, the new clause is intended to reinforce and strengthen how reconfiguration is carried out. Under Amendment 303A to Section 65A of the 2006 Act, bodies to which trusts’ special administration regimes apply should remain, so that the special administration regime applies to FTs and NHS trusts.

Again, we are shortening the Bill and making it simpler and probably taking out quite a lot of cost. I beg to move.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, I have several amendments in this group. I shall start with Amendment 294N, which is a probing amendment. As far as I have understood it, social enterprise bodies which are NHS bodies in all but name are coming into existence. They have evolved from PCTs under the transforming community services programme. They will be subject to special health administration arrangements. I ask the Government to confirm whether the social enterprises that come under the health special administration arrangements are coming under arrangements based on insolvency law and that, as such, that allows assets to be transferred outside the NHS and the redundancy payments are not guaranteed.

Amendment 295CA is intended to ensure that clinical commissioning groups are consulted before the Secretary of State makes regulations that allow Monitor to impose charges on commissioners. The charge imposed can include a levy to fund Monitor’s functions that have to be invoked in the event of failures. Amendment 295CB is intended to ensure that when setting such a levy, Monitor takes into account the impact of the levy on the financial stability of the organisation, especially a financial trust that is already in distress or failing. Amendment 304A requires that the commissioners are considered when the services of a failed financial trust are considered by Monitor and should be involved in the decision as to which should be continued, and that such services must include some continuation of education and training, because in planning for the future workforce, if a whole lot of posts were suddenly lost, it would destabilise the workforce planning. That is in addition to considerations such as the service provision and issues of equity and access. That becomes particularly important because if you do not have the staff with the appropriate training, you cannot, in the long term, provide the service anyway.

Amendment 304B is intended to ensure that commissioners are involved in the board's role in agreeing arrangements to secure continued access to NHS services will be achieved. Will that include the board’s selecting which commissioner would become lead commissioner for the process during a failure?

Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between Baroness Finlay of Llandaff and Baroness Thornton

Wednesday 16th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

I have added my name to one of the amendments in this group but support many of the others. The key issue is that children often need accurate diagnosis but do not get it. It is the way in which you detect learning difficulties of all sorts—sensory impairment and motor impairment. The need for a range of services integrated to support children is critical because as they grow up, unless their needs are addressed early they become greater; they do not decrease.

I shall illustrate that. A little girl, whom I shall call Emily, is eight. She was born prematurely but by the time she is eight, having had a stormy neo-natal period, she has epilepsy, cerebral palsy and swallowing difficulties. She is wheelchair-dependent, partially sighted and has communication difficulties. For her ordinary care, like other children, she needs her GP, district nurse and health visitor. For her hydrocephalus she needs paediatric neurosurgery. For her complex epilepsy she needs paediatric neurology. She needs physiotherapy because of the cerebral palsy and cramps. She needs speech and language therapy to help her learn to swallow efficiently and occupational therapists who help her to manipulate her communication device through which she communicates with her family who love her dearly and want to do the best for her.

That is one example and we have hundreds of children in our country who need integrated co-ordinated care. Perhaps Emily was lucky because she got the interventions that she needed and they were brought together. But, we also have a lot of children, as referred to in this debate, who are being missed on the way through because they do not have such clear-cut presentations. That is why, unless we use this as an opportunity to really change the way that we look after our children in health and social care in the broader context, we will be failing them.

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, this is a very important debate and the first opportunity we have had to look at the proposals affecting children. The Government’s plan is that public health services for children under the age of five, including health visiting and the family-nurse partnership, will initially be commissioned by the NHS Commissioning Board. To facilitate its plans to increase the health visiting workforce by 4,200 over a four-year period from 2011, the intention is that eventually this responsibility will pass to local authorities, which from the outset commissioned services for children between the ages of five and 19, including the Healthy Child Programme for school-age children. Maternity care meanwhile will now be undertaken by CCGs, although it was originally intended that this would be undertaken by the NHS Commissioning Board. The board will still be responsible for specialist neonatal services.

In the very helpful public health report recently published by the House of Commons Health Committee, Councillor Rogers of the LGG told the committee that the initial split of commissioning children’s public health services,

“doesn’t make sense. There is obviously a serious risk of a gap developing around the age of five, and it doesn’t make sense for school nursing to be in one place and health visiting to be in another”.

The Government’s response to the Health Select Committee was that,

“we believe that the commitment to raise the number of health visitors by 2015 is best achieved through NHS commissioning and thus will retain our existing proposal that the NHS Commission Board should lead commissioning in this area in the short-term”.

Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between Baroness Finlay of Llandaff and Baroness Thornton

Monday 14th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Mawhinney, will be tempted by this comment. If commissioning groups do not have a duty towards education and training, there is a real danger that they will commission services that are equal in quality but undertake no education and training and are therefore of a lower price as they do not incur the expenditure of having to have facilities, and so on, to provide education and training as well. In that case, we will deny the developing workforce expertise of quality placements in many parts of Britain as local commissioning will not take account of it.

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, at the risk of stating the obvious, the massive reorganisation of the NHS proposed in the Bill, combined with the need to make £20 billion of efficiency savings, without doubt, and with common agreement across many of the professions, threatens the quality and delivery of medical training, post-graduate training and workforce planning. That is why noble Lords have been exercised about this matter from the outset.

The concern is that responsibility for medical training will be given to healthcare providers who, as I understand it, have a history of allowing service and research to dominate the agenda at the expense of education. That brings with it risks of its own. Many trusts, as other noble Lords have said, have persistently failed to support education supervisors by recognising this activity in job plans and increasingly failed to support their staff in fulfilling important national roles related to standards setting and training. I think that most noble Lords who have spoken would agree that there is an insufficient mention of the safeguards that need to be put in place to protect the quality of medical training.

The noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, and my noble friend Lord Turnberg mentioned their concern about post-graduate deaneries. Indeed, that was a major stream of work for the Future Forum. I would like to say to the noble Lord, Lord Mawhinney, that as he made his remarks about the Future Forum I wrote in my notes that I do not understand why the Department of Health seems to have franchised that particular piece of policy-making out to the Future Forum. I think that the Future Forum was right in what it said about the dangers and risks involved in abolishing the strategic health authorities and its recommendation that it was mandatory and critical that alternative arrangements should be made.

We know that post-graduate deaneries are currently pivotal in quality-managing the delivery of medical training in trusts, but the planned replacements, being answerable to and funded by healthcare provider units, may lack the impartiality required to drive the quality agenda at a time when it is most needed because of the fiscal pressures and the associated threat to education quality. We all agree that effective management of the complexities of post-graduate medical training require professional leadership skills and experience, which take many years to develop. The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, underlined that point in her remarks. My noble friend Lord Warner put his finger immediately on the crucial aspect—how will the money be safeguarded and how will we make sure that the funding that is necessary is in the right place, is accountable in the right place, and cannot be directed into places that we would not wish it to be? How will the Government make sure that that is what happens?

I was very struck by the briefing on this matter by the Royal College of Nursing. The noble Baroness, Lady Emerton, referred to this. The Royal College of Nursing expressed its concern that Medical Education England would dominate the new organisation, HEE. I think we would all agree with the RCN that:

“It is essential that nurse educators are treated as equals and the membership of HEE is representative and not led by the medical deaneries”.

The Royal College of Nursing also believes that there is an essential role for national planning in the delivery of these important functions. I think that there are great risks in the decentralisation of education and training in terms of quality, standards and safeguards. It is unclear how the skill networks or the LETBs will be held accountable for performance issues. It is not clear what authority Health Education England will have to enforce performance issues or how its overseeing of the skills network will take place.

There are some key questions for the Minister to address. The crucial one, which was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Owen, who used the expression “chasm in continuity”, is how long we will have to wait for legislation. We cannot be sure that the primary legislation that will be required in this area is going to come down the track in the next year. The Minister needs to recognise that it is too risky to leave this to chance and we have to put the appropriate duties and powers in the Bill to ensure the continuity that the noble Lord, Lord Owen, mentioned. On these Benches, we are very happy to discuss how to resolve that particular issue and how to ensure that medical education is safeguarded.

This is an important group of amendments. I am slightly worried by the statement of the noble Lord, Lord Ribeiro, that this is work in progress. The problem is that there is too much work in progress and there will be too much work in progress for the next few years. This is an area where we cannot take chances. We know from previous reorganisations, for which my Administration were responsible, that we have to be absolutely sure that we are safeguarding the education and training of future generations of workers in the National Health Service.

The most reverend Primate said that continuity and certainty are vital. I agree with him. Certainty in this area is vital. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s views, but I suspect that we have not heard the last of this subject.

Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between Baroness Finlay of Llandaff and Baroness Thornton

Wednesday 2nd November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton]

I think that the noble Lord misheard me. I said that it was the first time that we had discussed this in the process of this Bill. I beg to move.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, I shall speak especially to Amendments 10A, 10B and 11A, and address my remarks principally to Amendment 10A, whose aim is to avoid fragmentation and inequity through a loss of contiguous, coterminous and comprehensive area-based structures for healthcare resource allocation planning, commissioning and service co-ordination. The amendment would ensure that the sensible changes that were just agreed today over GP contracts for this year are carried forward into GP consortia arrangements. The Secretary of State, Andrew Lansley, himself discussed issues around area-based practice at the congress for the Royal College of General Practitioners last month, and had a fairly extensive and open discussion with the GPs there on this topic.

I move to the Bill as it stands. I hope that with some of the background discussions that have been happening, my amendment will not just be dismissed and will be quite seriously considered, because it might solve a problem.

In the Bill, the new commissioning consortia’s duty—

Medical Profession (Responsible Officers) Regulations 2010

Debate between Baroness Finlay of Llandaff and Baroness Thornton

Tuesday 23rd November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, as the Minister quite rightly suspects, it was a combination of the report of the Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee on 7 October and my concerns that some aspects of the statutory instrument as drafted need further explanation that caused me to put down this amendment to the Motion this evening. I think it is important to say from the outset that as one of the Ministers who guided the Health and Social Care Act 2008 through your Lordships' House with my noble friend Lord Darzi, I am very pleased that this Government are showing determination to push ahead with this agenda because at the heart of this legislation are patient safety and ensuring that all clinical professionals deliver high quality, effective and safe care to their patients.

I fully appreciate that responsible officers are integral to improving care, and the development of their role seeks to raise the already high standards of the overwhelming majority of professionals, but their job is to identify and swiftly deal with the small number of staff who are not able to meet those standards. The public, professionals and the NHS have a right to be assured that licensed doctors are fit to practice.

I have absolutely no desire to delay the important matter of implementing this legislation. However, I think that it is important that the secondary legislation does the job that the original legislation intended. The report by the Merits Committee raises some important questions in this regard, as do some of the important bodies whose membership will, as it were, be on the receiving end of the instruments.

I think that the regulations do a very good job of describing the duties of the responsible officer and, indeed, the connection between responsible officers and designated bodies and medical practitioners, and this leads me to my first set of questions. Part 1 of the schedule contains a list of designated bodies that includes at least two organisations that the Government intend to abolish: strategic health authorities and primary care trusts. I join the Merits Committee in its recommendation that the House seeks clarification on how the Government's proposed changes to the NHS structure will affect the revalidation scheme in general and these regulations in particular.

Since the 2008 Act, the UK Revalidation Programme Board—hosted by the GMC, which I thank for its briefing and comment on this matter—has been rolling out the reform in phased stages, including a number of pilot exercises which aim to produce a well informed and robust system. Can the Minister tell the House how the changes that have been proposed will affect the pilots and their results? For example, the published guidance says that the responsible officers themselves will be assessed by the responsible officer in the strategic health authority, so what will happen now? How will the Government overcome this problem? I anticipate that we can expect some further orders and, if so, when and will they too be piloted? If nothing exists in the structure of the newly reformed NHS between groups of commissioning doctors at local level and the NHS Board at national level who or what will perform this function?

At the time of the original legislation, we had considerable discussion about the GMC and its role in this matter and about not conflating its particular and important role as the independent regulator for doctors in the UK or, indeed, creating conflicts of interest. At the moment, it seems to me that the only body that would appear to have a structure between the very local GP consortia and the national board is the GMC. What is the Minister’s view of this? How will revalidation work under those circumstances?

I thank the Minister for forwarding to me the letter that his honourable colleague Anne Milton sent to members of the Delegated Legislation Committee in another place. In this letter, she addressed the changes of architecture to the NHS. However, I am afraid that I did not find her explanation very comforting. She says:

“The Government’s proposed changes to the structure of the NHS set out in the White Paper ‘Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS’, in particular the abolition of PCTs and SHAs, will not affect the majority of organisations designated under Regulations, including NHS and independent hospitals. These organisations need to start putting the systems in place that support doctors, and provide the information that demonstrates the quality of care they provide. Without this, there is a danger that doctors will be inadequately supported for the introduction of medical revalidation in 2012. I believe that the medical leadership and stability provided by having responsible officers in place will also be important during this period of change”.

Well, quite: the two bodies that can provide that leadership are being abolished.

I turn now to concerns that have been expressed by professional organisations, which particularly led the Merits Committee to say that,

“these regulations are drawn to the special attention of the House on the grounds that they imperfectly achieve the policy objective”.

When I was a Minister, I would have regarded that as the parliamentary equivalent of being put on the naughty step and given a detention at the same time. I think that the Minister needs to give some thought to this matter and to put his responses on the record.

The British Medical Association has said that the laying of the order is “premature”. Although I am not one for delaying these matters, the Minister needs to address its concerns. The Royal College of Surgeons has expressed disappointment that many of its concerns were not addressed in the regulation. It raised the issue of potential conflicts of interest to arise from the installation of responsible officers with simultaneous corporate board responsibilities—for example, medical directors.

The RCS seems to think that such officers might be torn between trust obligations and the professional role of the responsible officer. I am sure that the Minister will be familiar with the examples that these organisations have raised. How do the Government intend to avoid the revalidation recommendations becoming the tools of managers and trust management agendas, rather than matters relating to the compliance of GMC and Royal College standards? Will the Minister confirm that it is the responsible officer’s responsibility to examine the doctor’s clinical ability and professional conduct, not his contribution to the meeting of trust budgets or targets? On this matter the regulations appear to be silent. Perhaps the Minister will expand. The RCS has expressed particular concern about the failure to incorporate whole practice appraisal in these provisions. I think that the Minister needs to give the House an explanation and reassurance about the need for the comprehensive protection to which patients are entitled.

On indemnity, will the Minister confirm how the Government will approach the issue of the potential increase in contributions for medical directors who take on the role of the responsible officer?

Finally, the GMC has expressed concern about appeals and that there is a significant omission of local appeals systems. The GMC fitness to practise processes should not be both the first and the last resort for appeal. There should be a viable appeals structure that flows up to fitness to practise. The British Medical Association says that in some organisations progress has been slow in demonstrating the capability to pull together the necessary data to actualise the new system. It says that appraisal has been patchy and disjointed in many organisations, and that that is quite aside from getting around to supporting any appeals system that may arise. I have raised several issues and I suspect that other noble Lords will seek clarification on the various other issues. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, we all know the sad history of this, through Shipman, which has led us to where we are today. I do not want to block these reforms because they will improve medicine for patients and for clinicians. But there are some questions which need to be sorted out urgently. One question is the role of the responsible officer in relation to doctors in primary care, particularly with the reorganisation.

In his opening remarks, the Minister spoke about trusts, but I would suggest that hospital practice is very much the easy end of it. The difficulty is where will doctors in primary care sit? How will the responsible officer work in relation to them? Where will academics sit and who will be the responsible officer, because there is sometimes a conflict, as has been pointed out, between academic priorities and the clinical priorities of a trust where that doctor may have an honorary contract? Even more, what about locums? What about the doctors who are constantly moving around? How will they be captured in the system? How will they be adequately and appropriately revalidated? Even with what used to be called 360 degree appraisal—that is, getting opinions from a lot of people—with locums there is a real danger that they will only spot their friends to fill out the forms because they may have had lots of contacts. Those concerns may never be sufficiently in the system to be raised before such a doctor moves on.

There is also a difficulty for those who raise problems. It may be that the doctor who is seen as the sand in the shoe of the trust, the difficult person, is raising real concerns about the way in which management is conducted, which is impeding good patient care. We know that one of the biggest problems is attitude. Often, the biggest problem encountered is not about the ins and outs of technique, because you can retrain on that quite quickly, but is about someone’s attitude. Someone who is whistleblowing, someone who works in the same organisation—I hate to use the term “whistleblowing”, because it is a sad reflection of the NHS as it is today that that term is around—and raises concerns should not in any way potentially be penalised for doing so. We would just go backwards and not forwards if that is the case.

Given that the majority of doctors are doing a really good job and are very flexible and going through changes, the system that comes in must not be too onerous. It must not be just a tick-box exercise. It has to be subtle enough to pick up real issues around performance and attitude. It has to pick up qualitative feedback, so that a bad attitude is detected, including a bad attitude towards patients.

As regards the responsible officer, I am afraid to say that I am sufficiently old-fashioned to think that I would prefer the minimum time after qualification to be a bit longer. It is not until someone has been practising for about 15 years that they really have accrued enough wisdom to be able to take on what will be a very onerous and potentially important role in relation to their colleagues. We need them to have a degree of wisdom. The appeals system is absolutely crucial if this is to work well and fairly. I hope that the Minister will give us a full reply in his response.

We also must be clear that the system will not pick up another Shipman. This is a clinical system and not a criminal justice system, so no one should be fooled into thinking that it will. Dame Janet Smith pointed out two things. First, the most important information about patient safety is doctors watching other doctors. They have to be able to raise concerns easily. Secondly, a good clinical governance system is a system in which questions can be raised at an earlier stage and more readily. So it is the whole system of the NHS with good clinical governance that will make this work. I hope no one thinks that just having responsible officers putting in appraisals will do the job because that will be a wallpapering exercise.

However, my main concern relates to primary care and to financial conflicts. In a privately managed organisation there may well be a conflict between what is actually in the patient’s best interest and what is being put forward as the protocol in that managed care programme. It may well be that the doctor is working in the patient’s best interests, but not in those of the organisation. Again, there has to be a degree of neutrality among the responsible officers. I hope that the Minister will be able to give replies to all these concerns, and like other noble Lords, I look forward to his response.