NHS: Reorganisation

Baroness Northover Excerpts

Thursday 16th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, for introducing this crucial debate in such an effective way. I strongly agree with my noble friend Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank when he suggests there should be more opportunities for this House—which has a very substantial level of medical knowledge which is not so clear in another place—to debate and discuss reorganisation, an issue which is still very much in the making. The greater the discussion and debate, the more likely it is that we will get an outcome on which everyone can agree.

I should like to add a personal note, and I hope I will not in any way embarrass my noble friend in saying it. My noble friend Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank is a remarkable example of the successes of the NHS. Anyone who knows what he has climbed back from will, I think, agree with me. On another personal note, my family and I have always been NHS patients and never private patients. I have to thank the NHS for, on at least two occasions, saving the lives of relatives in the most remarkable conditions. I can find very little to fault it with when it comes to critical illnesses and accidents as compared with other health services, some of which I know very well indeed.

I should like to begin by considering the current position, and here I find myself in some agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath. If you read—as I hope every noble Lord will, especially those involved in health discussions—the quite remarkable report of the Commonwealth Fund, which is nothing to do with the United Kingdom but to do with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which is where the word comes from, you would be standing on the rooftops cheering—or at least you would if you were in any other country except our own. The report is remarkable. It shows that our NHS, along with the one in New Zealand, is almost certainly the most cost-effective system we know. Surprisingly—indeed, amazingly—it also shows that the gap between the service provided to those in very low income groups and those in very high income groups is less than in any other developed country. The gap here is 5 per cent whereas in other countries it ranges from 20 per cent in what one might call core Europe, to as much as 60 per cent in the United States. Perhaps even more amazingly, it also shows that the amount of time taken up in waiting to see a consultant or senior clinician in the NHS is very near the bottom of the list. In other services, some of which are much more inclined to be clinician-led, the time spent waiting is much greater.

We have to think very carefully about how to ensure that reorganisation improves the existing NHS and not try to indicate that the NHS has been a failure. By any international standard it is not a failure. It is one of the most remarkable, dedicated public services anywhere in the world.

There is another truly important point. It is clear that the NHS has, over more than 60 years now, won an astonishing level of public trust. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, mentioned that. Anyone who cares to look at, for example, the recent study of social attitudes in the United Kingdom will see that the NHS is rated as being at the top of all the large public services. It is, rather sadly, ahead of education, but also ahead of almost all other public services. That means that we have to consider very carefully what we do to reorganise it. The bar has been set very high indeed in terms of public trust and public attitudes.

I should like to say one word to the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, who is no longer in his place. There is a great importance in giving clinicians the widest public say and influence in the services that their patients can expect. I think that all of us in this House—some of us in this House are clinicians, although I certainly am not—would recognise the importance of their influence on the NHS and any other health service. Picking up on the words of my noble friend Lord Alderdice, I suggest that clinicians on their own will not be an adequate response to the need to change the health service for the better.

Wonderful men and women though many of them are, they are not, any more than the rest of us, completely immune from occasional selfish attitudes. I will give an example, which, in the spirit of a bipartisan approach to the problems of the health service, I hope even the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, might conceivably nod at. Many of us recognise that one of the things that went wrong with the NHS in recent years, apart from the increases in expenditure which were clearly good, was the unfortunate contract that enabled GPs to get very much more money and to do so without making any commitment at all to out-of-hours service. I have quite a lot of GP friends, including my own GP NHS trust, who are embarrassed at the way in which they got so much more money for less work at a time when almost all of us can expect not much more money for a great deal more work. The outcome of this debate would be improved if most of us were able to hang up for the moment our tribal loyalties and look at the responsibilities all of us owe to the NHS and to the reorganisation of the NHS. Those responsibilities are honesty, frankness and admission of our own mistakes.

I move on to what most worries me about the reorganisation, apart from the fact that it did not appear in the coalition agreement in any shape or form. Indeed, the coalition agreement specifically promised no more top-down reorganisation and, at least as important, there is reference after reference to PCTs, which would mean that anyone who read it carefully would think that PCTs were likely to survive and not suddenly to disappear.

I want to suggest to my right honourable friend the Secretary of State—and perhaps at least as much to the greatly admired Minister of State, my noble friend Lord Howe, whose devotion to the National Health Service is known to us and who we all, I think, trust and respect very deeply—that a reorganisation needs to carry with it changes that are seen by the public to be improvements. One of those was referred to by my noble friend Lord Alderdice and he is absolutely right. I suggest that clinicians look at the significance of accountability in a public service that is massively financed by the taxpayer.

The provisions for accountability are very weak and not clearly spelt out. I do not understand why it would not be possible with the White Paper to move towards a different system. PCTs are disappearing very fast, as the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, and others have suggested. Commissioning bodies should include not only clinicians but also representatives of the public, some from local areas. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, was right when he said that there should be an executive lay chairperson whose responsibility would be to the community and not to clinicians or any other group which is bound to have its own concerns and special interests, rather than the wider interests of the public as a whole. The public would buy strongly into that kind of reorganisation. One which leaves that issue of accountability so vague and so little spelt out will not carry the trust that we need. My right honourable friend in another place who is today the Minister of State in the Department of Health, Paul Burstow, has suggested on several occasions the strengthening of accountability. The outcome has been existent certainly, but not strong. We need a much clearer system of accountability.

I will not detain the House for very much longer, but next I want to refer to my noble friend Colwyn who, in discussing the issues of NHS dentistry—I defer to him because he is much more knowledgeable on that subject than I could ever hope to be—referred to trial or pilot schemes.

[Baroness Northover]

My Lords, I hate to do this, but this is a strictly time-limited debate. When the figure seven shows, noble Lords have exceeded their time.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

I apologise. I did notice that it was not completely stuck to in several other speeches, but never mind. I will wind up quickly. First, if there were to be a trial period with an outcome that would be open to discussion and debate, I would support it. But that is not my understanding. I believe that these are called pathfinders and are the first wave of the reorganisation. Lastly—

[Baroness Northover]

I am sorry, but no one has got close to this length of time. I realise that this is very significant and I hope that we will come back to it in debate.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

I apologise. I said that I would wind up in two sentences and here is the second. I am very worried that if we do not think about the reorganisation thoroughly, we will be in real trouble with the public.