Health and Care Bill

Debate between Baroness Hollins and Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle

Committee stage
Thursday 20th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hollins (CB)]

My Lords, I have some brief points to add in support of my noble friend Lord Low’s Amendment 56A, which the noble Lord set out so clearly, and also in support of the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Crisp. It is very clear to me that primary eyecare has lagged well behind other areas of primary care in terms of any commissioned schemes for children and young people who are not in special schools and for adults with learning disabilities.

My experience with my son sound very similar to those described so well by the noble Baroness, Lady Uddin. The similarities are quite extraordinary, and my heart goes out to her. This week my son went to see the optician. He is visually impaired; he has a learning disability and autism. Fortunately for him, the optician responded well to the request for some reasonable adjustments to be made—which are required by law, but perhaps not well understood in local high street opticians.

Some years ago I did some research with SeeAbility, and together we created a visual, word-free resource. I declare an interest here, because this was with the charity I founded and chair: Books Beyond Words. We created a story called Looking After My Eyes and I read this with my son before he went to his optician’s appointment yesterday. It helped him and it helped the optician. But we need targeted improvements in optical care for everybody with a learning disability across the country. For this reason, I thoroughly support my noble friend’s amendment.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, in the wake of such a hugely powerful group of contributions, mine is very much a supporting role and I will be brief. I can only endorse the contributions to the amendment put by the noble Lord, Lord Low, and what we have heard about why it is so urgent. I will speak to Amendments 112 and 218, to which I have attached my name.

I attached my name to Amendment 112 because, as I was looking through the amendments, it struck me as such a crucial one. It was one that, even at this stage, it was really important to have four signatures on to show broad cross-party support. I am afraid I did not go for Amendment 113 and the rest of the list as well, on the grounds that I thought my name was there enough already, but I think the rest are—if not technically, certainly practically—consequential on Amendment 112.

After I had done that, I received a briefing from the Royal College of General Practitioners, writing also on behalf of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and the Association of Optometrists. I will quote one sentence. The college says:

“We think this is a classic example of where secondary care is at the centre of decision-making, while GPs and primary care are ‘consulted’.”


I think that reflects what the noble Lord, who has a great deal of expertise, said, and this is one amendment that is a total no-brainer.

Moving to Amendment 218, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, outlined the technical background to this and the statistics. The only thing I will add is that many think tanks, including the Health Foundation, the King’s Fund and the Nuffield Trust have produced information about how extreme the variation in availability of GP services is and how much effect that has on inequality. As the noble Lord, Lord Warner, said, if the Government have a levelling-up agenda, this also is surely essential.

The reason I was personally attracted to this amendment is that in my days as Green Party leader I travelled around the country a lot and quite often ended up meeting GPs, very often talking about public health issues. I encountered so many desperately hard-working, utterly committed people who were exhausted and felt that they could not retire or cut back their hours. They were wearing themselves to the bone because no one was coming to replace them. I felt that I needed to stand up and speak for those people.

Sometimes people think of this as something that affects rural or remote areas. However, the Norfolk Park health centre in Sheffield nearly closed last year because, after extraordinary efforts, it had been unable to find an extra partner to come in. As the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, knows, this surgery is a fairly modest bus ride from the centre of a major city. It is a purpose-built health centre and only eight years old, but it could not find a GP partner to come in. Eventually, after a great deal of public campaigning, the surgery remained open. That is a demonstration of just how broad this problem is, yet, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said, there are parts of the country—broadly the wealthier parts—that have expansive GP coverage.

Something has to be done, but, like the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, I am not sure that the proposal here is exactly the right way forward. We often say that something needs to be done, but we really need to see something done here. As with so many of the amendments that we discussed this morning, the Bill we have before us is the chance to sort out an urgent problem that must be sorted out.