Domestic Abuse Bill

Debate between Baroness Hollins and Baroness Finlay of Llandaff

Report stage & Lords Hansard
Monday 8th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hollins (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I know from my personal family and professional experience of people with learning disabilities that domestic violence can involve both paid and informal carers, including family members. I will not repeat the excellent points made by the noble Lord, Lord Curry. I am very pleased to support my noble friend Lady Campbell and to follow such powerful speeches.

The weakness in the Government’s position is that it underestimates the important similarities between carer relationships and those already in the Bill. It perhaps assumes that local authorities or the CQC will have sight of all carer arrangements, particularly for informal care, but this is just not true. I quote the January Stay Safe East report on discrimination, which says:

“The current definition of domestic abuse has a discriminatory impact on disabled victims of domestic abuse by non-family carers, who have no access to an Independent Domestic Violence Adviser, refuges or other domestic abuse services or to the network of therapeutic and other services open to other domestic abuse victims.”


The exclusion of carers from the definition of “personally connected” not only is blind to the reality of the closeness and complexity of carer relationships but would be discriminatory to disabled people on the receiving end of domestic abuse from carers, because they would be excluded from services. The exclusion fails to recognise that the significant relationships of disabled people may be different from those of non-disabled people. This also applies to people with learning disabilities.

My remaining point has already been made, so I will not take up time with it.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow all the speeches already given, because these important amendments close a loophole in our current framework. They do not criminalise carers; let us be clear about that. They simply recognise the reality that, when a person is living in their own home with others coming in to assist with activities of daily living, including the most intimate of care, that person is potentially vulnerable to exploitation. People also need help with indirect activities for daily living as, without this assistance, the person’s environment would rapidly deteriorate. Carers can be closer to and have more power over a person than a person’s family.

The Care Act 2014 Section 10(3) states:

“‘Carer’ means an adult who provides or intends to provide care for another adult (an ‘adult needing care’); but see subsections (9) and (10).”


Then subsection (9) states:

“An adult is not to be regarded as a carer if the adult provides or intends to provide care … (a) under or by virtue of a contract, or … (b) as voluntary work.”


The issue is that those employed, under direct payments or privately, or who exploit a vulnerable person with offers of help and support, are not known to the local authority and it has no authority over them. Even if the local authority becomes aware, Section 42 of the Care Act did not create any new powers to act to protect disabled people from abuse and neglect, merely a duty to make inquiries and to consider exercising existing powers.

This amendment recognises the power differential between the person who is vulnerable and the person coming into their home, on whom they depend and by whom they are being emotionally, psychologically or physically harmed. The person may be frightened and intimidated, not knowing who to turn to, and frightened by threats of all kinds. This is not just mild bullying or cajoling. This is serious, and there needs to be a way to ensure that those who have close and intimate access to the person cannot continue their exploits of mal-intent without serious consequences in law. There is no reason to discriminate against those who are disabled and cannot escape their situation, enduring abuse in their own homes, by leaving them without the adequate protection that this important landmark Bill aims to provide.

As I said, these amendments do not criminalise carers; they criminalise behaviours of mal-intent that cause serious harm—behaviours which are completely unjustified. They are behaviours of abuse behind closed doors in a person’s home by someone on whom they are dependent and personally connected and who has access to the most personal and often intimate aspects of their body and life. Without these amendments, we leave a loophole in protecting those with disability, as so clearly laid out by the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, and others. I hope the Government will simply accept these amendments as they are, but otherwise I will support a Division.

Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Hollins and Baroness Finlay of Llandaff

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

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, I also welcome these amendments; removing “unsound mind” is a major step forward. I have a couple of questions for the Minister and I hope he can clarify. I may have misheard him but I understood him to talk about head injury. It would be helpful if he could clarify that he was referring to acute head injury—or acute brain impairment of any sort—as opposed to long-term damage such as frontal-lobe damage, which can happen when you have had a major brain injury. This can result in very long-term problems and difficult behaviours, which may mean that people currently need to be assessed as subject to deprivation of liberty. Could he clarify that we are not discounting a whole group of people who, it is generally felt, benefit from being properly assessed and safeguarded?

I would also like confirmation from him on another group. In January 2015, the then Mental Capacity Act deprivation of liberty safeguards policy lead in the Department of Health wrote out quite widely. There had been a concern about people who were nearing the end of life, including palliative care patients and patients in hospices. It was made clear in this letter that if somebody had consented to a care package and then went on—as part of their disease process when they were dying—to need some restrictions, and possibly to be moved to another place of care, that would not fulfil the acid test as such; neither would it in the case of people who were being nursed in a side room who were not under continuous supervision and control. The reason was that, in palliative care cases, there is often a time when the family cannot cope as the patient becomes unconscious, is moved to a hospice or develops another condition that had not been anticipated. It would be an inadvertent consequence if this letter from January 2015 no longer stood. It has been important and has made care easier. It was following this letter that we were able to change the regulations for what had to be referred to a coroner. That made a major difference, because families found it terribly traumatic to find a relative subject to a deprivation of liberty safeguard having to be referred to a coroner. I simply seek clarification on those two issues, but I in no way question the importance of removing “unsound mind” from the Bill. I hope this is the beginning of us seeing the end of that term, which is stigmatising.

[Baroness Hollins (CB)]

My Lords, I welcome the replacement of “unsound mind”, but I ask the Minister to consider adding a safeguard to ensure that no one has their liberty denied because of a mental disorder without first being seen by a qualified doctor. It is essential that individuals are assessed for a mental disorder and not another condition presenting as a mental disorder, such as delirium or the side-effects of medication, which are common among older people. It is important that consideration is given to whether the disorder can be managed without depriving the person of their liberty. This requires assessment not only of their mental state but of their past and current physical health and medication. The assessment is a core part of this process. It has great significance because it relates to the deprivation of a person’s liberty. Who can carry this out should be stipulated in the Bill rather than in a code of practice. I ask the Minister to reconsider bringing forward an amendment to add this requirement to the Bill.

Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Hollins and Baroness Finlay of Llandaff

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

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, I feel that I should apologise for leading on this group of amendments, but it was by chance that my number came up. It was not my choice: I did not ask to lead on it.

The role of Amendment 65, which is the one that I really want to speak to, is to state clearly that we must strengthen the voice of anyone who has any concerns so that they can speak up on behalf of the cared-for person. I note that my noble friend Lady Hollins’s Amendment 66 provides powers to the voice of the responsible body and would mean that the responsible body must listen to representations. Amendment 67 strengthens the word “must”. There is a great deal in these amendments. I will not take the time of the Committee by speaking to other noble Lords’ amendments, other than to say that this group of amendments contains a great deal of rich wisdom. I beg to move.

[Baroness Hollins (CB)]

My Lords, this group of amendments concerns the appointment of an advocate, or appropriate person, to support the cared-for person in exercising their rights. The appointment of an independent mental capacity advocate and the identification of an appropriate person rely on care home managers being able to arrange a capacity assessment and a best-interests decision and on them notifying the responsible body. I noted the Minister’s assurance on our last day in Committee that care home managers will not be making an assessment themselves. But how will errors be identified and what will happen if the care home manager gets it wrong? Will the Minister tell the Committee how that will be detected on the basis of a paper-based review by the local authority when the paper has been supplied by the care home manager? The responsible body should not rely simply on what the care home manager thinks.

My Amendment 66 gives the local authority discretion to appoint an appropriate person or IMCA without notification from a care home, with whom there may be a conflict of interest, if the responsible body has reason to believe that such representation and support is needed for the cared-for person. Reasons to believe might include notification by an AMCP or a third party, or local authority social services involved in care planning.

The provision of advocacy can have a transformative effect and be the first time that the cared-for person’s views, and those of their family, are forcefully represented to decision makers. A failure to listen to people or to give weight or credence to what they say lies at the heart of many of the tragedies that have shamed social care and health services over recent decades. For that reason, it is vital for people to get the support that they need to express their views and exercise their rights, either through the appointment of an appropriate individual, often a family member, or an independent mental capacity advocate.

As they stand, Clauses 36 and 37 of the Bill are confusing and poorly drafted, with inconsistencies. For example, the Bill states:

“An IMCA should be appointed if the cared-for person … has capacity to consent to being represented and supported by an IMCA, and … makes a request to the relevant person”—


but IMCAs are instructed to support and represent only people who lack capacity. My Amendments 67, 69, 70, 73, and 74 add emphasis and aim to address these inconsistences and ensure that every cared-for person has access to support from either an appropriate person or an IMCA who is both willing and able to help them understand and exercise rights of challenge.

As it is drafted, the Bill leaves open the possibility of circumstances where a person may have neither an IMCA nor an appropriate person and therefore no means of being able to exercise their rights under Article 5(4) of the European Charter of Human Rights. Rulings such as the AJ v A Local Authority judgment, in paragraph 35, stipulate:

“Article 5(4) may not be complied with where access to a court is dependent on the exercise of discretion by a third party, rather than an automatic entitlement … Where a person lacks the capacity to instruct lawyers directly, the safeguards required may include empowering or even requiring some other person to act on that person’s behalf”.


My amendments therefore remove best interests from the criteria for appointment of a representative, as this should play no role in determining whether people are able to exercise their rights of challenge. Will the Minister explain the basis on which he believes that Part 5 of the Bill as drafted is fully compliant with this ruling and with ECHR Article 5?

I am also concerned about the potential conflict of interest if those responsible for arranging and providing care, such as care home managers, also act as gatekeepers to the person’s ability to exercise their right of appeal through best-interest assessments. There should be a clear route for the cared-for person to be able to appeal and to get the support that they need to do this. We know that access to justice is already a serious problem under the current system. The appeal rate is below 1% and cases such as that of Steven Neary and others show how hard it is for families and detained people to challenge public bodies where they object to the arrangements. I understand that the Government estimate that the new arrangements will reduce the appeal rate even further to 0.5%.

My Amendments 76 and 77 recognise the considerable responsibilities being placed on an appropriate person. In some circumstances, an appropriate person such as a family member who knows the person may well be best placed to assist the cared-for person, but may need some assistance. Making sure that an IMCA is involved in these cases would enable them to fulfil this role with support.

Nothing in the Bill details the functions that the IMCA will perform. It would help the Committee if we understood why this has not been addressed. The Law Commission’s draft Bill provided powers to strengthen regulation provision—Section 36 of the Mental Capacity Act—around how an IMCA is to discharge the functions of representing or supporting, including challenging decisions and facilitating a person’s involvement in relevant decisions. The experience of DoLS over the last nine years has shown us the need for clarity on when the representative—an IMCA or lay person—can or needs to challenge the authorisation.

My Amendment 79 recognises this and reinserts regulation-making powers into the Bill, extending it in the case of an IMCA appointed under the LPS to make provision as to how that advocate is to support the cared-for person, and where relevant the appropriate person, in exercising the right both to make an application to court and to request a review. This provision is necessary to secure a person’s rights under Article 5(4).

The Bill recognises that the role that the appropriate person undertakes provides a vital safeguard for the cared-for person for the purposes of Article 5 of the ECHR, but the Bill fails to place a duty on the responsible body to keep under review whether the appropriate person is undertaking their functions. This is an important safeguard under the DoLS, where the relevant person’s representative role—essentially an identical role to the appropriate person—has a duty to maintain contact with the cared-for person. My Amendment 80 places a duty on the responsible body to keep under review whether the appropriate person is undertaking their functions and, if they can no longer fulfil them, to appoint another appropriate person or IMCA at that point.

The Minister has given reassurances, a number of times, that issues within the Bill will be addressed through the code of practice. The requirement to act needs to be in the Bill. How it is done and implemented could be set out in the code of practice. I hope that the Minister will accept that these amendments address serious and fundamental issues that need to be resolved within the Bill.

Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Hollins and Baroness Finlay of Llandaff

Monday 15th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I added my name to Amendment 17 because I think it is important that things be written down clearly, particularly for the cared-for person—which is the term we are using—if they have fluctuating capacity or need to absorb things very slowly but want to understand. Also, their families and those concerned about them will not necessarily be there when someone comes in to assess them or formulate a care plan, but they will certainly have concerns and they may have a very good idea about wishes and feelings that could have been overlooked—not maliciously, but because people did not know about them. A written record will provide evidence for everybody about what is happening.

The way the consultation is conducted should therefore, I agree, demonstrate that restrictions have been proportionate and necessary, and that alternatives have been considered—and the reason they have been discounted should be given. I would like us to give people much more access to all their clinical records; the caring family, in particular, should have access to the records. Often, information held by family members and others close to the person is effectively like gold dust when it comes to planning their care, and would benefit from being shared.

Where someone’s condition deteriorates, if this has all been written down clearly you have a baseline against which you can measure changes. If they improve, the baseline shows the reason that things were put in place as restrictions, which could then be lifted. Again, that gives a benchmark against which to measure, which would make care more personalised. I hope this concept will be well received. I am unsure as to whether it should go in the Bill or in the code—it is easy to put lots into the Bill—but the principle is important.

[Baroness Hollins (CB)]

My Lords, I have some amendments in this group. I welcome the explanations given by the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, in her introductory comments. The Bill requires the responsible body to complete an authorisation record containing important information for the cared-for person. However, it does not require the responsible body to provide this information to so-called cared-for persons themselves. I rather like the term “cared-about person”; that is what families have in their minds, that they are caring about the person. While this is about official, statutory care, we still want that essence of caring about the person to be central to it.

The responsible body does not currently have to provide the information to the person themselves or to their family or an IMCA should they be involved in supporting that person. Amendments 51 and 52 seek to address this omission, by ensuring that the person themselves and any appropriate person or IMCA supporting and representing them are given copies of the authorisation record as soon as possible after authorisation is granted. Amendment 53 would require that the person is told of the options to appeal and notified of the outcome of reviews, variation or termination of an authorisation.

I support my noble friend Lady Finlay’s advice that information should be shared. I add that it should be shared in a timely, not reluctant, way. Perhaps the Minister can confirm that omission of the requirement to inform the person about options to appeal and about outcomes is just an oversight and that it can quite easily be added to the Bill.

Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Hollins and Baroness Finlay of Llandaff

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

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I have Amendments 47 and 50 in this group. They are concerned with the point at which court proceedings are triggered. It is appropriate that there is an ability to appeal, but it is also important that courts are not inundated and that disputes are resolved outside court as much as possible. Going to court should be the last port of call, but it should be accessible and should occur only when other interventions such as mediation have failed.

Sadly, sometimes cases need to go to court, which is why I have worded an amendment to allow the AMCP to consider going to court as part of their role. However, the AMCP must also be able to verify information and meet independently with the primary source—that is, the cared-ford person. That might mean setting up a meeting well away from other people who have previously been involved so that they can form their own view on whether there are other avenues that might be pursued before resorting to the court.

[Baroness Hollins (CB)]

I have added my name to Amendment 49 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barker. My concern is that a failure to meet the person directly might lead to a desk-based review, which would not enable the necessary scrutiny of the appropriateness of the care arrangements.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, this group of amendments takes us to the heart of the duty to ascertain the wishes and feelings of the cared-for person. For that reason, I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, for adding his name to my amendment, which would rename this part of the Bill, changing a consultation to a duty, and move up this paragraph from lower down:

“The main purpose of the consultation required under this paragraph is to try to ascertain the cared-for person’s wishes or feelings”.


That must be paramount. If we do not make arrangements that fit with and respect the known wishes and feelings of a person—or we make arrangements that cut across the feelings of others and cannot justify them very carefully—we will have failed completely in what we are trying to do. We should be empowering people to live as they want to live as much as possible while accepting that we need some restrictions in place.

That is why this group of amendments would also move the cared-for person to the top of the list of people to be consulted and make it clear that the professional responsible for the care plan needs to undertake the consultation. That will then inform what is happening and how the care is to be organised on a day-to-day basis and in the longer term, as well as ascertain whether the restrictions that may be put in place are necessary and proportionate in the light of knowing the cared-for person’s wishes and feelings.

It is important to remember that people do not object only actively. They may signal objection by becoming more withdrawn or less active. They may start eating less or there may be changes in toileting and so on—all of which can signal that someone is unhappy. All these changes should be considered in thinking about whether somebody is objecting in the broadest sense to whatever has been provided for them. They may well signal that their wishes and feelings are not being adequately respected. I beg to move.

[Baroness Hollins]

My Lords, I welcome the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, which seeks to ensure the wishes and feelings of the person are at the heart of decision-making. My Amendment 33 follows this principle by adding the cared-for person to the list of people with whom the assessor is required to engage before arrangements can be authorised.

Self-advocacy groups and charities supporting people with learning disabilities and their families have shared their concerns that the Bill does not require sufficient regard to be paid to their views in particular. I will quote some views expressed by Learning Disability England, a membership organisation:

“Disabled people and their families are especially worried that there is no requirement to consider the person’s own wishes. That is how the institutions were … We do not want to go back to the days of the institutions … There is a risk that we take away people’s independence and give power to people that may not be doing a good job”.


Consulting with people who lack capacity can be challenging and requires quite advanced communication skills. It is crucial that we get this right as the consequences are significant and lead to other improvements or deteriorations in people’s health and independence. I declare an interest here as chair of the Books Beyond Words community interest company, which develops resources and pictures to help doctors, nurses, care staff and others to communicate more effectively with people with learning disabilities and others who find pictures easier than words and to support decisions which, at their outset, appear too difficult or challenging.

Amendment 35 is designed to oblige those carrying out the assessment to explore less restrictive alternatives thoroughly. This would need to take into account the cared-for person’s family and others who know them well and have an interest in their welfare, who are likely to have important information and expertise to share about the person’s needs and what good support, which maximises their freedom, might look like.

Health and Social Care (Safety and Quality) Bill

Debate between Baroness Hollins and Baroness Finlay of Llandaff

Friday 13th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, first, I apologise to the House for not declaring my interest as president of the BMA at the opening of this debate, given that the BMA has briefed about problems with the Bill.

My Amendment 5 focuses on the word “best” in the term “best interests”. I have had a concern about this because of the way “best interests” is now used. I have looked back, thanks to help from the Library, at 147 pieces of legislation in which the term “best interests” has been used. If one looks at those that came after 2005, when the Mental Capacity Act was passed, it is notable that that term has been included when it concerns the best interests of children, young carers, safeguarding, protection of those who lack capacity, or with regard to organisations such as charities—but not with regard to adults, who would be considered to have capacity as individuals. The term is also used in connection with the storage of gametes and the provision of local services and pension funds, which must act out of the collective best interest of people with whom the legislation is concerned.

I have also understood—I stand to be corrected—that in legislation the most recent use of a term supersedes all preceding use of that terminology in legislation. Therefore, the Mental Capacity Act should be the Act we look to. However, here we have a specific decision to be made in the so-called best interests of an individual, who can be assumed to have capacity, about the decision over their data, and that decision is being made by another person. My concern is that we are legislating for one person, the health or adult social care commissioner or provider, to decide that inclusion of the NHS number as a consistent identifier is, or is not, in the individual’s best interest, even though the individual with capacity may, if consulted, feel very differently. My concern is because there are quite serious implications about not including the NHS individual identifier.

I turn to the principle of best interests. For years we have tried to make sure that that term was used properly in both health and social care. We had a very interesting debate earlier this week on the post-legislative scrutiny of the Mental Capacity Act. Strenuous efforts have been made to roll out empowerment of individuals to enhance capacity and not to take paternalistic decisions of one person over another. Indeed, I have been involved in trying to teach the principles of the Mental Capacity Act, and I am fearful that this wording—as in this piece of legislation—could be seen to undermine the laudable intentions of that Act in terms of empowering individuals to take decisions.

I turn to Amendment 6 and how the NHS function of the unique identifier is important. In our society, we have several different identifying numbers—national insurance numbers, bank account numbers, passport numbers and so on. The national insurance and passport numbers are held from within the province of government. Perhaps it would be more honest to state that, if you do not wish your NHS unique identifier to be available to be available to you, you have effectively signed yourself out of NHS services.

Indeed, I am grateful for a briefing that I have only just received this morning, which points out—if I have understood it correctly—that opting out of the use of the NHS identifier opts you out of systems such as “choose and book”, screening programmes and so on. So effectively you are in part removing yourself from services that are available as a public health measure, as well as services that would be available to you as a patient. I wonder whether we should state clearly that the onus is only on you as the individual to explain why you wish such a number to be excluded, perhaps because you are a public figure and wish to use an alias—or should we begin to think about whether there should be the occasional possibility for people to have two numbers to use in different situations, rather as you can, in exceptional circumstances, hold two passports?

The NHS number makes links across the whole system of pathways of care. Indeed, it is there to reduce risk. For example, if you have two patients with a similar name who are going for surgery, the NHS number will be used as a checklist identifier to make sure that the right patient of that name is taken down for surgery. We are all aware that, when patients are in hospital and frightened and feel disempowered, they are less likely to challenge the processes that are happening to them than when they are fit and well.

Another problem concerns me. What about the person who is coerced or pressurised into withholding their NHS number because somebody is badly intentioned or abusive towards them and does not wish that abuse to be revealed? A person may appear in different parts of the healthcare system but, without that NHS identifier number, the dots cannot be joined up to protect them or to detect that there is a problem.

I seek confirmation in summing up from the Minister that I am correct in understanding that, if you decide not to use your NHS number, you are opting out of things such as screening programmes, as well as having to present your NHS number to be able to opt out of systems such as care.data, and so on. At the moment, if you opt out of care.data, you are opting out of screening programmes as well.

Another problem for the NHS is that hospital episode statistics rely on the NHS number, which is effectively how the hospital is paid. If there is no number, the only identifier that the hospital has is your name and address, which is a far greater threat to privacy in the system than is the NHS number.

With those comments, I await the Minister’s response to the questions I have posed. I emphasise again that I have real concern about how the term “best interests” is being used. I seek clear clarification in his answer so that we can have clarity on the record about how the term is used in the context of the Bill.

[Baroness Hollins (CB)]

My Lords, Amendment 7 in my name focuses on the proposed duty in Clause 3 to share information between health professionals and social care professionals. I apologise that I was out of the country during Second Reading and was unable to speak. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Ribeiro, for championing the Bill through the House. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for supporting this amendment, together with the noble Lord, Lord Low, who unfortunately cannot attend today.

From my own research and the work of the confidential inquiry into the premature deaths of people with a learning disability, I know that there are some appalling patient safety outcomes for people with learning disabilities, where improved information sharing has a real prospect of helping. Data scaled up from the confidential inquiry show that 1,200 people with a learning disability die avoidably in NHS care every year. In many cases this is due to poor or inadequate care or diagnostic overshadowing, where, put simply, professionals fail to see past the learning disability to what is really affecting the patient, may not recognise that the person has a learning disability, or may have had no training on what a learning disability is.

Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between Baroness Hollins and Baroness Finlay of Llandaff

Monday 19th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

I am grateful to the Minister for meeting me with the President and Vice President of the College of Emergency Medicine and for listening so attentively to the concerns raised. This amendment comes from those discussions and aims to resolve the potential lacuna around the commissioning and the provision of unscheduled urgent and emergency care at all times of day and night.

Emergency medicine departments—commonly known as A&E—see 15 million patients a year, of whom about a quarter are children. About 7.5 million patients arriving in A&E are not ambulant. Typically one-third of these on a stretcher need to be admitted, most frequently into an acute medical bed. The extent of seriously ill and injured attendees is illustrated by the fact that one in 50 will need high levels of care. A quarter of all intensive care admissions come through A&E and seriously ill patients go straight to coronary care and high dependency units from the resuscitation room in the emergency department.

The full spectrum of integrated services has to involve acute medicine, acute surgery and orthopaedics, paediatrics, obstetrics and gynaecology and is crucially underpinned by critical care and anaesthesia.

These very seriously ill patients need integrated services along the whole care pathway; care cannot be broken up. The full spectrum of back-up services with radiology and laboratory services needs to be there 24/7. The best outcomes—and we were talking just now about patient outcomes—for trauma and stroke victims are absolutely reliant on immediate cross-sectional imaging, ideally co-located in the emergency department.

There is a need for closer integration and improvement of the services needed to care for emergency department patients. For example, those with mental health problems, both acute suicidal ideation and acute psychosis, and those with drug and alcohol problems, need a comprehensive integrated psychiatry service, as they are a very vulnerable group. Improving primary care, both out of hours and alongside emergency departments, is essential if departments are to deliver the best care and not be overwhelmed. This will require close collaboration, integration and accurately informed commissioning.

Emergency departments are the 24/7 final safety net for all other services in the healthcare system and they are the last open-access point of call. Escalation of a problem, failure in community care and inadequate out-of-hours primary care support all result in urgent presentation out of hours. Such patients often arrive at night, are unstable clinically and cannot be sent home again, as they are alone or unable to monitor the condition reliably. These 7 per cent to 8 per cent of attendees need to be observed for up to 24 hours in a clinical decision unit, where there is twice daily consultant input, either until they are stable enough to be sent home, or until deterioration indicates admission and ongoing management.

Emergency departments are busy places, providing 24/7 care, looking after patients with wide-ranging needs from resuscitation to reassurance, and interacting with many specialties to ensure the best care. The seriously ill initially need the close interaction of typically three to four specialties; any fragmentation threatens the quality of care.

Commissioning of services in emergency care is optimised by direct and close working between those specialists responsible for delivery and the local commissioners. Given the size and complexity of urgent and emergency care, this should mandate such a specialist on the local commissioning board.

The challenge to us with this Bill is to ensure that commissioning processes recognise that patient choice in emergency care is inappropriate, as every patient needs access to a quality service that is fully integrated with pre-hospital services such as out-of-hours primary care and ambulance services, and with all the back-up and specialist services that patients are moved to for ongoing management.

The national Commissioning Board must work very closely with the College of Emergency Medicine to ensure that commissioning guidance drives up the standards of weaker departments, that the integration of services is included in the commissioning and that the urgent and emergency service for a population has the full skill set to deal with the full range of undifferentiated clinical problems that arrive at the only open access point of care. It is key to local commissioning that specialists in urgent and emergency care are directly involved. Without that, we will replicate Mid Staffordshire, but it may not be evident until unnecessarily large numbers of lives are lost. I beg to move.

[Baroness Hollins]

My Lords, given the concerns among the medical profession which are still evident, I ask the noble Earl for reassurance that, for those services where commissioning is appropriate, competition will always be on the basis of quality, not price, and that providers will not be able to cherry-pick lucrative parts of the care pathway to the detriment of vulnerable patients, such as people with learning disability or severe mental illness—people that I am particularly concerned about as a psychiatrist. The health and well-being of these patients depends on the effective delivery and co-ordination of complex care pathways.

According to the Guardian, NHS Devon and Devon County Council have shortlisted bids to provide front-line services for children across the county, including some of the most sensitive care for highly vulnerable children and families, such as child protection, treatment for mentally ill children and adolescents, therapy and respite care for those with disabilities, health visiting, palliative nursing for dying children, and so on. On the shortlist for the £130 million three-year NHS contract are two private profit-making companies as well as the Devon Partnership NHS Trust, which has been bidding along with Barnardo’s and other local charities.

The contract will apparently be awarded, according to the criteria, to the most economically advantageous bid, which appears to be possible under current commissioning arrangements. I seek reassurance from the Minister that the new safeguards in the Bill also prevent such commissioning decisions risking the perceived risks raised by my noble friend with respect to the commissioning of integrated care pathways in emergency care. I am referring not just to the emergency care part of the pathway but to the whole care pathway, which inevitably requires stable working relationships across organisational boundaries.

Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between Baroness Hollins and Baroness Finlay of Llandaff

Wednesday 29th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, this is a clear example of an iatrogenic condition, very often originating in primary care. When patients have presented with insomnia, instead of being taken through the more complex and time-consuming aspects of sleep hygiene and possibly talking therapies to discover the cause of their insomnia, a prescription has been given all too quickly and readily. If we are looking at responsibility falling back to clinicians in primary care, it seems inordinately sensible that the clinical commissioning group should consider its responsibility to provide support to patients who end up with an iatrogenic problem.

I can see that the Government may feel that this is a very specific amendment targeted at a very specific area, but the guidance that needs to go out to clinical commissioning groups on their responsibility for the behaviour of all those prescribing on their patch may well deal with some of the principles behind this amendment and ensure that the necessary services are provided to patients who, completely inadvertently, fall foul of taking the drugs that they were prescribed and as they were told to take them.

[Baroness Hollins]

My Lords, I pay tribute to the work of my noble friend Lord Sandwich, who has done so much to raise awareness of the often unmet needs of people whose addiction originated in a legal prescription. There is some progress in training doctors—for example, in undergraduate medical education with a new national curriculum on substance misuse. This guidance provides learning objectives on rational prescribing and iatrogenic addiction. The fact that such a curriculum is only just being introduced shows the need for the attention of clinical commissioning groups to be brought to this issue.

There seems to be a special responsibility on the National Health Service to provide better care for people affected by medical prescribing practice, and I hope that the Minister will be able to suggest how such a responsibility could be emphasised in the Bill.