Health and Social Care Bill

Baroness Tonge Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hollins]

My Lords, I would like to add to what my noble friend Lady Murphy has said by commenting on a couple of amendments in this group which concern the need for the tariff to be able to reflect and adapt to the requirements of people with complex needs. I am thinking particularly about people with learning disabilities who may need additional time to be devoted to them because of their conceptual or communication difficulties, or other disabled people who may require reasonable adjustments to be made in order for them to use a service. I think also of people with mental health problems using hospital services such as maternity services. The provision of maternity care is hugely complicated by the presence of people with an enduring mental illness. The need for the tariff accurately to reflect and encompass these needs poses quite a challenge.

[Baroness Tonge]

My Lords, I rise to ask a question rather than to make comments. I am rather confused about how tariffs work. I am thinking particularly of sexual and reproductive health services. Therefore, I support Amendment 292A tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Gould.

Sexual and reproductive health services are currently provided by general practitioners and clinics directly commissioned by primary care trusts. They can be family planning clinics, youth counselling clinics or genitourinary medicine clinics. Under the new system, GPs will presumably carry on providing sexual and reproductive health services and abortion counselling services, although I am unclear exactly how they will be remunerated in the future. Those GP services are very variable. Some GPs provide a superb service while others provide a very bad one. Some do not provide certain services at all so it is common for patients to go to clinics in their area which have been provided by the primary care trust.

Under the new health service, local authorities will commission and provide sexual and reproductive health services and abortion counselling services as well as HIV prevention services, but not the treatment, although I do not want to go into that now. They will be responsible for those sexual and reproductive health services. However, I am puzzled by the following matter. Currently, if a patient does not like their GP or finds that the GP does not provide the service they want, they can go to a local clinic. However, because of political or religious arguments within a local authority it may have made those services a very low priority, or perhaps does not provide them at all. It seems to me that there is nothing to compel local authorities to provide certain public health services. If a patient cannot get the relevant services from a GP or does not like them, and cannot go a local clinic because one is not available, can they go to a clinic in another local authority where they are not resident? This could be a problem for many patients all over the country, particularly young people who tend to go to different areas for their services where perhaps they are not known or the doctor does not know them. So I am very concerned.

Could the Minister please say how these services will be affected if no national tariff is set on public health services? How do we know that local authorities will not only provide services for sexual and reproductive health but accept people from other local authorities for treatment? It is a very important question for many people in this country.

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I think that this debate has clearly demonstrated the importance of having a robust pricing system in the NHS. At a minimum, it must deliver sustainable reimbursement for efficient providers and promote value for taxpayers’ money. In addition, it must support the role of commissioners in securing continuous improvement for patients by strengthening incentives for providers to improve quality and efficiency.

Perhaps I could address one aspect of the opening speech made by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton. She spoke rather disparagingly, I thought, about the Secretary of State palming issues off on to quangos. Listening to the noble Baroness, the Committee may get the impression that it is this Government who have created quangos for the first time. I make no apology for being part of a Government who believe that arm’s-length bodies can play a very valuable role in public services, especially when given the autonomy to deliver those services free of political micromanagement. The Government also believe that the number of such bodies has grown over recent years to an unsustainable level, and that is why the Bill abolishes a large number of them. So I gently urge the noble Baroness to stop complaining quite so much about quangos and remind herself that she was part of a Government who created a very large array of such bodies.

I begin by addressing the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness which proposes a delegated power for the Secretary of State to make regulations on commissioners regarding a duty as to continuous improvement. I am sure that we all agree with much of the apparent intention behind this amendment, first, that commissioners should act with a view to securing continuous improvement in the provision of services in terms of both quality and efficiency, and indeed in reducing inequalities; that is fundamental to their role. The second intention is that there is a role for regulations in ensuring that commissioning processes operate as means to this end; in other words, that tools such as service reviews, procurement and competition are used transparently and effectively to secure continuous improvement in the provision of services in the interests of patients. Our proposal is that such regulations would be made under Clause 71. They could be updated from time to time, subject to parliamentary resolution. While we would not disagree with some of the suggestions proposed under Amendment 277B—which, I recognise, has been carefully crafted—it may be a bit too detailed for the face of the Bill. In any event, we would want to consult publicly on these matters before putting firm proposals before Parliament.

The role of the pricing system is to underpin and enable continuous improvement—for example, by strengthening incentives for providers to adopt best-practice models of care, in line with commissioning priorities. The noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, was quite right in all that she said on that point. Furthermore, the payment by results programme, introduced by the previous Government, has gone a long way to strengthening pricing within the NHS. It has ensured that reimbursement better reflects the volume and complexity of patients treated, and it has helped to reduce transaction costs. However, a number of problems have been identified with this system over the last few years, including by the previous Administration. These problems have not yet been fully addressed, and we want to do so.

The problems are as follows. The methodology for setting prices is not transparent for either commissioners or providers. That makes the system unpredictable, and there is evidence of significant variations in the tariff from year to year. That undermines investment and innovation.