NHS: Winter Challenges
Baroness Merron Excerpts(1 year, 7 months ago)
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Baroness Merron
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the challenges facing the NHS this winter.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and, before the Minister responds, warmly welcome him to your Lordships’ House and to his ministerial role. I wish him well.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Markham) (Con)
I thank the noble Baroness. If I may respond personally first, I am delighted, honoured and privileged to be taking on this role. I look forward to working with all noble Lords and learning from the vast experience and expertise around the Chamber. The Government are aware of the pressures facing the NHS this winter due to potential surges in Covid-19, the return of respiratory conditions and impacts arising from cost of living challenges. The Government are taking a range of actions, including increasing NHS capacity this winter by the equivalent of 7,000 beds and allocating £500 million of funds to speed up the safe discharge of patients from hospital. We will keep the House updated as we progress.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
My Lords, NHS Providers reports that 72% of trusts are extremely concerned about the cost of living impacting on their ability to manage winter pressures, tackle care backlogs and meet targets. Can the Minister tell your Lordships’ House what assessment has been made of the impact on health services of the ever-widening gap between the Government’s original assumption of inflation and the spiralling increase and, to protect patients, what will be done about it?
Lord Markham (Con)
As I am sure the noble Baroness is aware, we are investing an unprecedented amount of money into the NHS and have recruited more doctors and nurses. We are setting up 7,000 new beds to cope with it all. At the same time, I accept that we are in a period of unprecedented challenge from not just the cost of living crisis but the effects of Covid and the likely impact of flu this year. That is why I very much see our role as making sure that that record level of investment is used to the best effect and that we drive performance across the NHS. I am sure we all have lots of examples of brilliant services and examples of where more needs to be done, candidly. My role in this, as someone with a background of business experience, is to try to take those areas of best practice that I have seen in some of the hospitals I have already visited and make sure they are allocated across the whole NHS.
Health and Social Care Update
Baroness Merron Excerpts(1 year, 7 months ago)
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Baroness Merron (Lab)
My Lords, it may have been some weeks since this Statement was made in the other place, but its subject matter is as relevant today as it was when it first saw the light of day. The big questions remain: among them, where are the costings and how will it be funded?
The NHS is facing the worst crisis it has ever seen, with patients waiting longer than ever in A&E, stroke and heart attack victims waiting an hour for an ambulance and some 378,000 patients waiting more than a year for an operation. Those figures date back to the summer—before we even get to the winter and the challenges winter always brings.
At the time of the Statement, the NHS Confederation’s verdict was that
“these measures will not come close to ensuring patients who need to be seen can be within the timescales set out … they will have minimal impact on fixing the current problems that general practice is facing over the winter”.
But has not the situation got even worse since this Statement was first heard? The scale of the challenge faced by our health and social care services, the people who work in them and the public who rely on them has worsened as the state of the economy worsens. The country is now experiencing spiralling inflation which far exceeds the assumptions on which budgets were set, while those who work in the health and care services are struggling with the cost of living. What will be the response to this? How and where will the so-called efficiency savings demanded by the Treasury be found?
What we do know is that the impact will not be equal. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London addressed at the weekend, it has been reported that the Government’s long-promised White Paper on health disparities has been dropped. Can the Minister confirm this? If that is not the case, can he advise on when can we expect this crucial plan to narrow the widening inequalities in health outcomes between the poorest and the wealthiest, between white and black, Asian and minority-ethnic people and between those in the north and south?
The Statement says that patients will be able to get a GP appointment within two weeks, but let us remind ourselves that, prior to 2010, the guarantee of an appointment was within two days, not merely an expectation of two weeks. Can the Minister provide more detail as to how the two-week expectation will be met? I ask this in the context of the record numbers of GPs indicating that they will be retiring or leaving the profession, where burnout and low morale are at an all-time high. How will the numbers stack up when 4,700 GPs have been cut over the past decade, and the long-promised 6,000 GPs are not on course to be delivered? With 330 practices having closed in just the last three years, where will these appointments take place? Are there plans to open new practices?
The gaping hole at the heart of the Statement is, as we know, the lack of a workforce strategy. In the ABCD plan presented by the Health Secretary, the only reference is under D, which refers to doctors and dentists. They are important—there is no doubt about that—but what about the nurses, paramedics, technicians, care workers, cleaners and caterers? Without a plan to tackle the whole staffing crisis, there is not a plan for the NHS.
What are the Government going to do about the staff shortages of 132,000 in the NHS today? This cannot be overlooked. Earlier today, the Minister told your Lordships’ House that there were 200,000 more staff in the NHS than 12 years ago. Perhaps he could elaborate further. Are these full-time equivalents? Where are they and what roles do they perform? Crucially, does the Minister accept that there still needs to be a fully costed plan to deliver the workforce that we so desperately need?
The Statement refers to some £500 million to speed up delayed discharges. Can the Minister help with some more detail on this? Is it a new investment or a re-announcement? How will it be funded? It is indeed right to say that if patients cannot get out through the back door of the hospital because care is not there in the community, we get more patients at the front door and more ambulances queuing at the front. That is exactly the situation we see today. The crucial point is that unless the Government act on care workers’ pay and conditions, employers will not be able to recruit and retain the staff they need. What is the plan to address this?
Finally, can the Minister reassure the House and patients across the country that the response to the crisis in the NHS will not be to lower standards for patients but to raise performance instead? I am sorry to say that this Statement misses the target. I hope the Minister will reflect on the points that I have raised, and other noble Lords will undoubtedly raise, and take the opportunity to use his new and important position to make proper change and improvement.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, I echo the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, about the nature of the plan. It is full of warm words and aspiration, light on detail, especially on funding, and seems to disregard the reality on the ground at the moment. I also echo her concern about the rumours of the White Paper on inequalities being shelved. That is really important. Many of us spent a lot of time in your Lordships’ House during Covid hearing about the problems of people with Covid, particularly those from ethnic minorities and deprived backgrounds. There is a lot of data to say that those people have really struggled.
The workforce plan is something else that from these Benches we asked for consistently long before work started on the Health and Care Act, but absolutely consistently since then. Turning to the plan itself, on ambulances, the announcement in July was welcome but three months on—and this was an emergency announcement—it feels as if nothing has changed. The number of delayed discharges remains stubbornly high, and we know that there is a new wave of Covid rising: the ZOE study figures today suggest around 230,000 new daily cases and 2.2 million active cases. That is going to continue to rise: all the medical experts in this area say we are now definitely at the beginning of this wave.
B stands for backlogs, and I am afraid that that is not really improving either. Although it is good to see that the two-year waiting list is reducing, the under-two year list continues to grow: 6.8 million at the end of last month. The plan talks about patients being redirected from hospitals, but our primary care system—GPs, community nurses, physios, speech and language therapists in the community, and especially social care—is already at breaking point. It is good to be offering Covid boosters, but why are under-12s excluded unless they are immunocompromised? Children at schools without proper ventilation were drivers of the last two waves of Covid, and it just seems ridiculous that they have not been included, because that would be an easy win.
In my question earlier today, I asked the Minister about care and particularly about virtual hospitals. It is good that the plan is picking up on some excellence in the NHS, and I am very proud of my local hospital for doing it, but the Minister did not actually answer my question, which was: given that this work of virtual hospitals creates more work for GPs, community nurses, physiotherapists in the community that in the past would have been done in hospitals, will there be extra resources for primary care? Without it, primary care is already at breaking point; they cannot just magic extra time and energy to do it.
The section about GPs is admirable in spirit, but doctors have repeatedly said that their main problem is a lack of doctors. We also know from the BMA survey back in the spring that GPs’ workload has increased by 30% on clinical administration alone. It is not Covid; it is mainly to do with digitisation and complex systems. It is all very well talking about getting administrators in to do it, but these are administrative tasks that doctors have to do themselves. Unfortunately, it is causing a problem, and I do not see any solution in the plan.
Whenever Ministers talk about doctors, they talk about the highest number ever—indeed, the Minister did so earlier—but there are two problems with that. There are more patients than ever, and that is never reflected in any comments by Ministers. Government funding for doctor training has not been sustained. This year, far too many—hundreds, just under 1,000—newly qualified doctors, fresh out of university, could not get training places because there was no funding for hospitals to be able to do it. The exodus of NHS staff was reported in the Times just last Saturday. The net change is not positive now; it is negative.
On dentists, it is very good news about the simplification of government rules regarding overseas dentists qualifying to work, and we look forward to seeing the regulation shortly, but the main problem is the drastic need to overhaul the government contract. While the Statement says first steps are being taken, I ask the Minister when the major work funding for it will be concluded. Will he also tell your Lordships’ House what provision there will be for the 3 million people who are either immunosuppressed or immunocompromised—for example, because of blood cancer or because of strong medication which has to suppress their immune systems? The government advice on the web page still says that people in this group should not mix with people who are not fully vaccinated or may possibly be brewing Covid, but a year ago all support to this group was ended. Along with other people in this group, because I am one of them, I am about to have my sixth Covid jab, but I have no idea how long I am going to be protected for—that is why I wear a mask a lot of the time in the Chamber. Half a million of the most severely immunocompromised people cannot make any antibodies in response to the vaccine. They were promised antiviral medication or Evusheld. Five million doses of antivirals were ordered, but only 50,000 were handed out, and the Government have just refused to allow Evusheld to be used. What will the Minister do to ensure that this group of people will be protected?
Finally, the Health Service Journal has said that two out of three integrated care systems have fallen off track on their financial plans because of the impact of inflation, Covid cases not being funded this financial year and higher spending on agency staff. This plan will not work if the new integrated care systems cannot work. It is vital that the Minister tells us what plans there are to make sure that ICSs will be supported properly.
The plan for patients has many warm words for delivery. I know this is something the Minister cares greatly for, and we will support him, but the words on their own will not do it. Our NHS and care sector are on their knees already. The Nuffield Trust report says that data shows that even without the pandemic, the backlog would have been well over 5 million. It says the NHS was already stretched. I look forward to hearing the Minister explain how the NHS and care sector will be able to deliver on this plan in their current state.
Lord Markham (Con)
As I mentioned, we have 3,500 more doctors, but the 50 million more appointments target, which we are well on the way to delivering, is from not just GPs but across the piece. It is also from nurses and community pharmacies. I think we would all agree that doctors are our most precious resource. Given the comments on not wishing to overburden them and the stresses of that, we need to make sure that their limited time is focused on the patients that most essentially need that time. We are expanding supply and spreading it among nurses—as I mentioned, from my experience with my mother, they are very capable and willing to pick up a lot—and among pharmacies as well.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
My Lords, I appreciate the answers that the Minister has given your Lordships’ House, but would he be good enough to write to address a number of the more detailed questions raised and give the information requested?
NHS: End-of-life Care
Baroness Merron Excerpts(1 year, 8 months ago)
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Lord Kamall (Con)
The noble Baroness will be aware that earlier in the week, when we had the debate on integrated care boards and their responsibilities, we added—thanks to the work, once again, of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay—palliative care services to the list of services that integrated care boards must commission. Integrated care boards will be accountable to NHS England, but also the CQC will be doing a lot of evaluation and they will be measured against the list of services that they have to commission. Clearly, there will have to be accountability on palliative care services.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
My Lords, when a child is at the end of their life, quality palliative care should ensure, of course, both the child’s comfort and managing pain and symptoms, but also provide support and care for the entire family. These are clearly heartbreaking situations for everybody involved, so will the Minister assure your Lordships’ House that the review will take account of the support that is given to the whole staff team, including ancillary workers? They, of course, have a key role to play.
Lord Kamall (Con)
One thing that often happens at reviews is that we realise how complicated these issues are. One often cannot pinpoint one key issue, or one silver bullet, as it were. Therefore, quite often—and I was on a call on a different issue yesterday—we thought we had to tackle certain issues but realised there were wider systemic issues. Clearly, that is going to be the case here. NHS England’s palliative and end-of-life care programme is an all-age programme, but there are specific pieces of work focused on children and young people. We have also been working very sympathetically with charities such as Together for Short Lives. It has been commissioned to produce written guidance to provide ICBs and ICSs more detail, as the noble Baroness asked for, but also to make sure we make it a better environment and learn.
Primary and Community Care: Improving Patient Outcomes
Baroness Merron Excerpts(1 year, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Merron (Lab)
My Lords, I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Patel, and thank him for bringing this debate before your Lordships’ House, which he did with his customary attention to detail, but also searing analysis of what is before us today. This has indeed been a very sobering debate, and I hope it will be of use to the Minister and also to the new Secretary of State, who of course we wish well in her endeavours.
The noble Lord, Lord Patel, spoke of primary and community care as the bedrock of the health and social care services, and indeed it is the door through which most of us enter when we are seeking to access health and community care. However, our access to it and its suitability are deeply affected by the lack of co-ordination, resources, staffing and planning, as we have heard during the debate.
Dissatisfaction is running at an all-time high. This is not only a bad thing in itself but it affects confidence in the system. It is of increasing concern that those who should be making contact with their local GP are simply put off from doing so because they cannot access the service they require, not least because getting an appointment is beyond them, or so delayed, or difficult. This is not how it should be.
My noble friend Lady Pitkeathley hit the nail on the head when she reminded your Lordships’ House that people do not know or care who provides services; they just want the right service, at the right time, in the right way. People need to be seen as whole people and not only according to the bit of the system that is seeking to treat them. I think there is a very strong message for the Minister about the organisation of health and care services being around individuals and all that comes with them, rather than the other way round.
There are critical backlogs in both the sectors we are considering. There are some 1 million people waiting for care services within the community. The backlogs are a key factor in the dire ambulance delays that we are seeing, and they are added to by the number of patients who are in hospital beds when they should be in their own beds, either in their own homes or in a care setting—something about which the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, spoke so clearly.
The Community Network, which is comprised of organisations including NHS Providers and the NHS Confederation, has called for the Government to treat waits in the community sector on an equal footing to backlogs in the acute hospital sector, including through the development of a plan to address these delays as well as accelerating work to improve the quality of national data collections in community care. Could the Minister confirm whether the department has explored this option, because it would be a helpful way forward?
The noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, was right to put down a challenge to how systems are organised and about whether hospitals are the right place—the best place—for dealing with chronic conditions when there is so much opportunity to deal so much better with a number of these closer to home. I hope the Minister will reflect on this.
It is the case, as we have discussed so many times, that the issue of the workforce comes up time and again. We know that there is an increasing volume and complexity of demand, a rapidly aging population and, with that, huge workforce shortages. I must repeat the call for a long-term workforce plan to address what is a stark situation. Failure to address this will only exacerbate the backlogs and health inequalities still further.
The response so far has been disappointing, as we saw in the passage of the Health and Care Bill. This is not just about numbers, important though they are. It is also about what staff do, and whether we have the assessment available to make a judgment as to whether we have the right range of staff, as the noble Baroness, Lady Watkins, referred to, to make sure that they can be available to meet peoples’ needs.
Although it is welcome that there are, as we have heard, additional roles to be developed and additional staff to be made available to work in primary care networks—including pharmacists, physiotherapists and link workers—and it is welcome that there is to be recruitment, there is a gap: how will general practices implement a multidisciplinary model of care, either within or across practices, which will embrace these roles? This is lacking, as we have seen from the King’s Fund investigation into this issue, and it is leaving staff isolated and demoralised. How will this be dealt with beyond recruitment? How will these additional and new roles come into play?
How will the fact that appointments are getting ever more difficult for people to get be dealt with? A GP Patient Survey found that only 56% have reported having a good experience of making an appointment, and there are early signs that the pressure on GPs is affecting patients’ experience of their appointment even when they actually do get one. Similarly, the British Social Attitudes survey showed that satisfaction with GP services fell to 38% last year, which is the lowest level ever recorded. What will be done to address this problem?
On GP numbers, my noble friend Lord Hunt again raised the important question about the reduction in GP training places. What is the thinking on this reduction? How does this square with the expectation that we need, and are told that there will be, greater numbers of GPs?
Improving access will require actions from across the health and care system, and it is critical that integrated care systems and their partners consider how they will provide support to general practice to improve access in the short term. How will this manifest itself within the new integrated care boards?
As we know, and as the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, referred to, the pandemic accelerated new ways of working, including a rapid uptake of existing digital tools to deliver patient care. While this has benefits for patients and staff, there is a proportion of the country who are digitally excluded or who have needs that make digital access less appropriate for them. How will this be addressed so that nobody is left behind?
Finally, I refer to the proposal from the noble Lord, Lord Patel, for a special Select Committee to take forward how we can address the lack of co-ordination in the primary care sector. I hope that the new Secretary of State will consider this worthy of consideration, because there is no doubt that the debate today has shone a very clear light on the fact that we need to step back, make the change and build the system around the needs of the patient, and not the other way around.
NHS: Access to Treatments
Baroness Merron Excerpts(1 year, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Merron (Lab)
My Lords, the QualityWatch report by the Nuffield Trust and the Health Foundation found that the record waiting lists we now see cannot be attributed to the pandemic, as has so often been suggested in this House. What is the Minister’s response to this report’s findings?
Lord Kamall (Con)
The Government are well aware of the waiting list problem. In fact, we have virtually eliminated two-year waiting lists, except for some of those difficult cases. The targets, working with various partners across the system, is to make sure that we eliminate 18-month waits by April 2023. When we look at this, those waiting 18 months or longer will be reviewed every three months at a minimum. Diagnosis and treatment of patients will be prioritised according to clinical urgency, then length of wait. NHS England has introduced six categories of prioritisation and is regularly reviewing those to make sure that patients are treated appropriately.
Urgent and Emergency Care
Baroness Merron Excerpts(1 year, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Merron (Lab)
My Lords, as the new Prime Minister is appointing her first Government, I am very glad to see the Minister in his place this evening. I have a sense of despair over the dire situation in the ambulance service that led to yet another Statement. However, I welcome the inclusion of the importance of vaccination and the funding for motor neurone disease. I also pay tribute to St John Ambulance and am pleased that it has now been formally commissioned. Could the Minister confirm that this extra capacity is being used by the system today?
The outgoing president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine has said that ambulance delays have got so bad that the NHS is now “breaking its promise” that life-saving emergency care will be there when it is needed. The facts are that 29,000 patients waited more than 12 hours in A&E in June—more than ever before—and 10,000 urgent cases waited more than eight hours for an ambulance last month. But this is not just about life and death; it is about the distress and severe discomfort of those who are kept waiting. Analysis by the Financial Times estimates that the deteriorating state of emergency services could be costing 500 lives a week, so can the Minister give an estimate of the number of people the department believes have died unnecessarily because they have been stuck in an ambulance waiting to get into A&E, or because an ambulance has turned up late or not at all?
We have gone from no crisis in the system in 2010 to annual winter crises, and now to there being a crisis all year round. We hear that the NHS will tell patients to avoid A&E as the winter crisis bites early. Can the Minister tell your Lordships’ House when the winter crisis will now start? What is the forecast of how much worse excess deaths will be over this winter? What is the Minister’s response to the QualityWatch report’s assessment that the roots of record waiting lists and delays to ambulance services predate the pandemic?
Ambulance delays are directly related to one in seven hospital beds being occupied by patients medically fit to leave but who cannot be discharged because there is no social or community care to support them. To give but one example, there are reports today of an elderly man who, sadly, died last month in the back of an ambulance after waiting six hours to be admitted to Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital. The chief nurse at the hospital said that the man
“remained in the ambulance due to significant pressure on our emergency department and inpatient wards.”
However, at the same time, more than 200 patients in the hospital were medically fit to be discharged. Will this matter be considered in the investigation? How will situations such as this up and down the country be resolved?
How do the Government intend to ensure that we have the supporting social and community care workforce we so desperately need? Why is there continued resistance to workplace planning and reporting to this House?
Care workers, who are desperate for a decent wage, are being lost to the likes of Amazon. The Government’s answer has been to pull the “immigration lever” and to recruit people from overseas on lower wages. How will this be sustainable? What difference will it make in the long term?
The Statement mentioned the new mandate for Health Education England to train 3,000 paramedic graduates. What is the Government’s reasoning behind conversely capping the equally important number of medical graduate training places, which the Medical Schools Council has criticised?
We all know that the cost of living crisis is likely to be devastating. If people cannot afford to keep themselves warm, they are more susceptible to illness and infections. We know that 10,000 people a year already die as a result of cold homes, and that this could be far worse this year without action. Could the Minister say what the Government will do to address this? Have they assessed the impact of the cost of living, which continues to rise alarmingly, on health outcomes and well-being? Do they have a strategy to help people proactively?
What consideration has been taken of the fact that rising energy costs will push care providers to breaking point, with some homes facing closure, unable to absorb increases of 500% or more? What plans do the Government have to protect care home residents from finding that they have no home?
The reality of the ambulance services’ situation is that things are getting worse, not better. Can the Minister advise your Lordships’ House on what exactly the Government will do to reverse this trend?
Integrated Care Boards
Baroness Merron Excerpts(1 year, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Merron
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how they are monitoring and assessing the transition of Clinical Commissioning Groups to Integrated Care Boards; and how the success and impact of the new structure will be evaluated and reported to Parliament.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Kamall) (Con)
Integrated care boards took over the role of commission and secondary care services from clinical commissioning groups on 1 July 2022. NHS England formally oversees these ICBs, and it has a legal duty to assess annually the performance of each ICB and to publish its findings. CQC system assessments will also provide an independent assurance to the public and Parliament. The success and impact of these new arrangements will be measured by a DHSC-commissioned evaluation completed by academics.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
My Lords, there are key factors to providing successful health and social care services that are outside the control of integrated care boards but very much within the control of the Government, including workforce supply and investment in social care capacity. Could the Minister tell the House how the impact of government provision will be measured and, where necessary, what action will be taken to put this right so that ICBs are actually able to deliver quality joined-up services for local people?
Lord Kamall (Con)
As the noble Baroness will be aware, a lot of the work at the local level will be done by the ICBs, in partnership with others, under the ICS system. On the Government’s role on workforce, the department commissioned Health Education England to produce a report to look at the long-term strategic drivers to support long-term workforce planning. This work is nearing its final stages. We have also commissioned NHS England and NHS Improvement to develop a long-term workforce plan for the next 15 years. In addition, as the noble Baroness will know, Section 41 of the Health and Care Act 2022 gives the Secretary of State a duty to publish a report at least every five years.
Cannabis: Medicinal Use
Baroness Merron Excerpts(1 year, 10 months ago)
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Lord Kamall (Con)
In simple terms, I completely agree. There should be a way around this and I will take this back to the department. In fact, I was quite provocative when I was getting advice on this, but I have also been warned that I am conflicted on this issue, so I will try to push it as long as I am not seen as being in conflict. It is very difficult, but I want to do the right thing.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
My Lords, we look forward to the Minister returning on this point, but to build on the points made by other noble Lords, despite the change in the law, many families are experiencing great anguish in getting treatment for young epilepsy sufferers and are left with little option but to pay thousands of pounds each month. What is the Government’s view on implementing all the recommendations of the recent NHS review of the barriers to accessing prescription cannabis products for medicinal use? If they are not planning to implement all the recommendations, which ones are the Government looking at?
General Practitioners: Shortage
Baroness Merron Excerpts(1 year, 10 months ago)
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Lord Kamall (Con)
There are a number of reasons why some GPs and other health professionals prefer to work part-time as opposed to full-time. Many people, especially given the stresses of the pandemic, want a better work/life balance. Some people have suggested in the past that we should focus on full-time equivalents. We should make sure that current staff who want to go from full-time to part-time can do so within the system, so that we can retain them, while tackling all the barriers to retention as well as recruiting more GPs.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
My Lords, the appointments system is not working well for GPs or patients. Healthwatch England reports that complaints about GP services are rising, the main problems being difficulties getting an appointment, exorbitant waits on the phone, about which we all know, and an end to online facilities to book slots. What assessment has been made of the detrimental impact on people struggling to access GP services, particularly those who are more vulnerable, and what is the plan to put this right?
Lord Kamall (Con)
The noble Baroness is absolutely right. We know that, for many people, their first entry into the system—their portal, if you like—is trying to get an appointment with their GP. As the noble Lord, Lord Patel, mentioned earlier, we have to look at how we can modernise this service. In the short term, we have made money available to help improve triage for people who phone up for services; this includes how to manage incoming and outgoing calls. In future, we are looking at more digitisation and extending the functionality of the NHS app so that people can book appointments for all sorts of services; if they are waiting for an appointment or secondary care, they will also be able to see how long they will have to wait and where they are in the queue.
Coronavirus: New Cases
Baroness Merron Excerpts(1 year, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Merron
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the recent rise in Covid cases across the UK to 2.7 million infections over the last week.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Kamall) (Con)
We continue to see Covid-19 case rates and hospitalisations rise in all age groups, with the largest increases in hospitalisations and ICU admissions in those aged 75 and older. A large proportion of those hospitalised are admitted for reasons other than Covid. However, Covid is identified due to the increase in case rates in the community and the high rates of testing in hospital, including among those with no respiratory symptoms. Current data does not point to cases becoming more severe.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
My Lords, with a stark rise in infections, many people—particularly the clinically vulnerable, carers and older people—are feeling anxious, yet the Government have been noticeably silent, perhaps being somewhat distracted. We might be through the worst of Covid but evidently it has not gone away; individuals, organisation and businesses still want guidance. I have two questions for the Minister. Are the Government planning any campaigns, perhaps involving scientists and others, to highlight current risks and to encourage the take up of booster jabs? Are there plans to reintroduce mandatory mask wearing in hospitals, which the chair of the JCVI considers sensible?
Lord Kamall (Con)
I have to strongly disagree with the noble Baroness when she says that the Government are doing nothing. We are reliant on the UKHSA, which monitors rates and gives us advice, along with the JCVI. In my briefing from the UKHSA, it said it is continuing to monitor cases. As many noble Lords will remember, when we announced the living with Covid strategy we said that we are always ready to stand up measures should case rates rise so much that our health system was under pressure. We managed to break the link between infections and hospitalisations and hospitalisations and death; if that gets out of control then of course we will stand up the measures that we had previously.