Health and Care Bill

Baroness O'Loan Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Report stage
Wednesday 16th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brown of Cambridge (CB)]

My Lords, at this very late hour, I just rise to say that I hope your Lordships will not confuse individual anecdotes, however moving, with the very extensive scientific evidence base quoted by the noble Baronesses, Lady Sugg and Lady Watkins.

[Baroness O’Loan (CB)]

My Lords, what is proposed in this amendment is a fundamental change in the law. What we must look at is, I think, fundamentally for each woman, what actually happens in each situation, and what care is provided for the woman in that situation.

I believe that the Government were right to say that this provision would come to an end and that it is not necessarily safe. There are major uncertainties for many women when they conceive. They do not always know when their last period was, as noble Lords have said. But it is not just that. They do not always know the nature of their own medical health and the consequences of taking the telemedical abortion pills.

In that period after 2020 alone, 10,000 women needed hospital treatment for the complications arising from telemedical abortions. It is not an anecdote but a scientific fact that losing a baby, whether by miscarriage or by abortion, is a very bloody and, on occasion, very painful business, which gives rise to all sorts of problems and complications.

Medical Abortion Pills

Baroness O'Loan Excerpts

Thursday 10th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

As I am sure noble Lords will acknowledge, this is a very sensitive area. Initially, it was meant to be a temporary-only service. If we do decide to respect its temporariness, an extension will probably be made to ensure that the clinics and other medical services have time to adapt before returning to the position before the pandemic.

[Baroness O'Loan (CB)]

My Lords, is the Minister aware of a recent study, based on FOI requests to NHS trusts, which revealed that in 2020 more than 10,000 women who took at least one abortion pill at home, provided by the NHS, needed hospital treatment for side-effects? That is equivalent to more than one in 17 women, or 20 women a day, needing hospital treatment. Does the Minister agree that such reports indicate a serious and disturbing lack of understanding by its advocates of the dangers of the telemedical abortion policy?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for giving the other side of the debate; it shows what a difficult subject this is. Sometimes people dig up the wider debate, but I think we have to be very careful and focus on the issue. This was a service offered to women, and the initial consultation was in person, but we made temporary provision, rightly, during the pandemic to ensure that women were treated with dignity, while appreciating that it had to be done at distance. We have looked at whether this should continue to be temporary or become permanent, and we are still weighing up this difficult decision. I think the debate today shows that there are a number of views, and it is not as simple as either side proposes.

Health and Care Bill

Baroness O'Loan Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 7th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O’Loan (CB)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Birmingham, on his excellent maiden speech. I think, too, that this is an appropriate time to pay tribute to those staff in hospitals, care homes and the community who have laboured so hard over the past two years. However, routine medical care did not happen. Elective surgeries were cancelled and treatment for the most serious conditions and illnesses was limited or not delivered, and now we have a major problem. The problem is actually worse in Northern Ireland, where people routinely wait five years for necessary treatment. Across the UK, the frustration of doctors and other medical practitioners at their inability to provide essential services because of staff shortages—resulting in part from the Covid emergency, but not just from Covid—is well-known.

I first served in 1996 on one of those health boards to which the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, referred. Then people remained in hospital because they could not be discharged to their own homes with proper care packages or to residential and nursing accommodation. Some 25 years later, it is still a problem. For 25 years the issue has been discussed, papers written, committees formed, strategies devised—and the problem has got much worse.

The compulsory immediate Covid vaccination of staff, low levels of salary for the intense and difficult work of caring for those with reduced mobility, dementia and serious ill health, and a lack of support have resulted in a further loss of staff from the care sector. Care of this kind is inevitably resource-intensive. It is not just mechanistic; it requires a compassion and humanity that very often simply make it possible for people to settle in places where they would rather not be but must be. Will the Government ensure that there is a change of philosophy that will result in a greater respect for and appreciation of those who care in such circumstances, consistent with our proudly-proclaimed Great British values?

The repeal of Section 75 of the Health and Social Care Act 2012 is welcome. The new processes, which are still being developed, must enable proper procurement and remove unnecessary bureaucracy but ensure that contracts are awarded with proper scrutiny and that there is consideration of the impact of individual contract awards on the provision of services generally. Can the Government give an assurance that accountability and transparency really will result from the passing of this Bill?

There is also a need to ensure that the creeping privatisation of the NHS will not result in increased costs, reduced equality of access to services, and longer waiting lists. The public sector NHS trusts and NHS foundation trusts must be the default provider of NHS services.

The potential conflicts of interest for those such as employees of private healthcare providers as members of ICBs has been referred to repeatedly. They will be responsible for the commissioning of NHS services. I can see the benefit of private sector experience, but government must ensure proper accountability and there must be a mechanism for regulating and identifying conflicts of interest when they emerge.

Finally, the proposed level of delegation of power to the Secretary of State over operational clinical matters is quite simply unacceptable.

Medicines and Medical Devices Bill

Baroness O'Loan Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 2nd September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O’Loan (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I would like to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, for her excellent work on the report that she has presented to the House. I would like to support her recommendations, and most particularly her recommendation for a patient safety commissioner.

This is an important Bill, and there is an opportunity presented by it to improve the regulation of human organ harvesting across the world. Organ transplantation is one field of medicine that offers great hope to the recipient. Organs are taken from deceased donors in particular circumstances and for years living donations have been possible. A person can donate a kidney, part of a liver and so on, and live perfectly well afterwards. I have seen it. It can make the difference between life and death. It is a rapidly growing field of medicine in which demand exceeds supply.

Here in the UK, we have stringent regulation of the process of organ donation to ensure that those who donate are protected and that donation is only allowed from those who are fit and are willing to donate without any payment but to help someone else. That is how it should be and at its best this is a wonderful development. Similarly, organ transplantation after death can, in the right circumstances, bring untold blessing to those who receive an organ.

However, the very fact that demand for organs for transplant exceeds supply means that there is a market in organ harvesting, both from the living and the dead. For decades, people have been forced through poverty to sell their own organs. This is unethical and wrong. There should be no support for such practices, and we must ensure control over any contribution made by British companies that enable such activity.

We know, too, that there is transplant tourism, where people travel to countries where they may be able to get a transplant, in some cases with few questions asked about where the organ donated to be transplanted came from. We know, too, that organs can be shipped and transplanted into recipients across the world without proper procedures. There continues to be a major problem in the lack of global control over organ harvesting. There has been a reference to the work of the China Tribunal and to reports of a state-run programme of forced organ harvesting in China, the organised butchery of living people to sell body parts, which the China Tribunal compared to the

“worst atrocities committed in conflicts of the 20th century.”

We know that Uighurs, Falun Gong practitioners and others are being killed and subjected to forced organ harvesting.

When an organ is taken, whether from a living or a dead body, it needs to be preserved and transported to its destination. Just as we now require that imported products, whether they be clothes or anything else, should be manufactured in ethical conditions, we need to ask ourselves whether British manufacturers are selling to China the devices, medicines and technology which will enable China to sell organs which have been harvested from people in China’s detention camps or otherwise wrongly obtained. There could be many spin-offs from such activity, including the use of such organs—that can be imported here without any evidence of consent or traceability—for medical research, a market in immunosuppressant drugs for the recipient, and a market in harvested organs which might even be imported and used here in the absence of full regulation.

China is not self-sufficient; it is highly reliant on the West for the equipment and medicines which it needs to help its organ transplant and harvesting industry. The extent of British engagement is not immediately accessible in the context of the Chinese organ transplantation process. The report The Economics of Organ Harvesting in China indicates that there are British companies with interests in this area—in research and in producing and selling organ-preservation solutions to China.

It is right to support and develop ethical, regulated organ transplantation. It is profoundly important that this Bill provides for proper regulation. We can provide regulation to prevent companies being empowered and enriched by the mass crimes that may be facilitated elsewhere. This will show the People’s Republic of China and the Chinese Communist Party that the balance between human rights and commerce will change.

We need to think very carefully about how this Bill will proceed, so that it does that which it seeks to do and protects the health and safety of those who may be forced organ donors.