Covid-19: Lateral Flow Tests

Baroness Merron Excerpts

Thursday 10th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

That is a valid question and if the noble Baroness could write to me, I will respond.

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

My Lords, in addition to the need to improve the approval process for lateral flow tests, when can we expect to see a real plan for living well with Covid? Will this include proper provision for better sick pay, improved testing and those who are clinically vulnerable.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

Clearly, the noble Baroness raises a number of important considerations for when we come up with a living with Covid strategy. At the moment, we are consulting on it to make sure that we have an appropriate strategy that covers many of the issues she referred to.

Health and Care Bill

Baroness Merron Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Wednesday 9th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow everyone who has spoken in this group. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, for so powerfully and clearly introducing this amendment, to which I was pleased to attach my name. The case has been overwhelmingly made, so I will not go over the same ground but will add a couple of points and draw some things together.

It is interesting that we started the day with the ARIA Bill. Concern was expressed from several quarters of your Lordships’ House about public money going into ARIA and whether we would see public returns from that money. As the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, said, what we have seen so often is the socialisation of costs and the privatisation of profits in so many areas of research and knowledge.

I draw to the attention of any noble Lord who has not seen it a very useful briefing on this amendment prepared jointly by Just Treatment, STOPAIDS, Global Justice Now and Universities Allied for Essential Medicines. That brings out two points, and it is worth looking at the national and the international. We have tended to focus on the international. Nationally there are some fascinating figures. The NHS pays more than £1 billion a year for medicines, but two-thirds of the upfront costs of producing those medicines come from public funding.

That is the national side. Looking at the international side, we have talked about and focused very much on Covid, but we really need to think about the fact that we are now in the age of shocks, in a world that is environmentally extremely disturbed. That is certainly a factor in the appearance of Covid; we have seen SARS and MERS, and there is Ebola out there. We need to build resilience into our world. We are talking about changing so many different things, and whether it is supply chains, medical supply chains specifically, or anything else, we really need to think about preparing for that different world, with the focus on resilience, rather than on private profits as it has been.

The noble Lord, Lord Crisp, asked an interesting question: why do we see the UK, the EU and Switzerland lining up against the rest of the world? The answer is there in profits, in an ideology that says, “We have to organise everything for private profits and somehow the benefits will trickle down.” It is interesting that today Michael Gove has gone on the record as saying that trickle-down has not worked; it is a failed ideology. Of course, there is also the impact of those profits being fed into our political system and the influence that that money and that lobbying have.

I will finish with this final thought. The noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, said—and I think this reflects what other noble Lords, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Lawrence, and the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, said—that we have been utterly wicked in our behaviour towards the global south in the Covid pandemic in failing to ensure that it has crucial vaccines. We have also, as has become obvious with omicron, spectacularly shot ourselves in the foot. I say to those who will not accept moral arguments for this amendment: please look at the practical self-interest. No one is safe until everyone is safe.

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti for raising the crucial matter of countries and peoples left behind in terms of the opportunity to have a necessary vaccination programme available to them. My noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours spoke of the importance of supporting innovation, which is one of the ways in which we can ensure that, while my noble friend Lord Howarth rightly said that the subject requires exploration outside of the Health and Care Bill—something also commented on by the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, who emphasised, as do I, the need for the political will to make progress.

There is no doubt, as we have heard today, about the gravity of the issues at stake and the need to resolve them. It is the case that where public funding is provided there must be conditionality, although of course that may be complex to refine into legislation. There are of course additional issues when funding is also coming from the private sector along with a need to ensure a balance of interests. It would certainly be helpful to have a stipulation that avoided placing undue bureaucracy and restraint on smaller developments and small-scale research. We do not want to see the pace of research slowed down with researchers tied up in lengthy proposal writing, contract negotiations and legal agreements.

As my noble friend Lady Lawrence has said, we know that the pandemic is not over until it is over everywhere, so the amendment raises the opportunity to explore whether the immediate waiver of intellectual property rights would mean an end to the pandemic everywhere. It is relevant to assess what contribution or otherwise intellectual property rights make to the promotion of technological innovation and the transfer and dissemination of technology. There is an advantage for producers and users of technological knowledge and the consideration of rights and obligations, and that needs to be considered in the round.

In respect of the response and actions to a pandemic declared by the World Health Organization, while I understand the intention behind the amendment, in order to be consistent I would comment with some caution about the Secretary of State being compelled to immediately take actions, particularly without any form of oversight—something that we will return to later in Committee.

However, I hope that today we can obtain some reassurances from the Minister about the Government’s intentions and plans in order that we can find a way forward so that low-income countries and their peoples have access to vaccines both now and in future.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, for bringing this debate before the Committee today and for the heartfelt speech that she gave. The noble Baroness will be aware of the view of this Government following her recent Question in the House on the subject of patient waivers. As my noble friend Lord Grimstone set out, the Government remain open to all initiatives that would have a demonstrably positive impact on vaccine production and distribution. However, we believe that waiving intellectual property rights would have the opposite effect. Doing so would dismantle the very framework that helped to develop and produce Covid-19 vaccines at the pace and scale now seen. It would risk undermining the continued innovation in vaccines and technological health products that is required to tackle a virus, especially as it mutates and evolves, so we believe that doing so would be a mistake.

Instead, the success of the Covid-19 vaccine rollout vindicates the value of public and private co-operation. While university research departments are great at research, large-scale manufacturing and global distribution are not their function, so we recognise the importance of their working with partners with expertise in this area.

The intellectual property framework is key to those efforts. It has incentivised the research and development that has led to the development of Covid-19 vaccines. It has given innovators the confidence to form more than 300 partnerships, an unprecedented number, and has contributed to the production and dissemination of vaccines and other health products and technologies across the world, with global Covid vaccine production now at nearly 1.5 billion doses per month.

I share the noble Baroness’s intention that research funded through taxpayer finances should benefit the taxpayer, but we do not consider that that is best achieved through particular constraints in primary legislation. Research contracts afford greater flexibility and more powerful levers than the amendment, through provisions such as those requiring the dissemination of intellectual property for patient benefit, revenue sharing with the Government of commercialised intellectual property, and requirements around access to medicines in the developing world. Contractual protection mechanisms in funding arrangements can also ensure that intellectual property funded by taxpayers results in the creation of taxpayer benefit.

Health and Care Bill

Baroness Merron Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Monday 31st January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, this group rightly began with an amendment about adequate provision in dentistry. As we have heard, there is currently a massive shortfall in provision of NHS dentists and indeed dentists as a whole, so much so that a charity called Dentaid, which normally works in the third world, is now working in Dewsbury and Batley—and possibly in other parts of the country that I am not aware of—because people cannot get free dentistry. The situation is made worse by the backlog of treatment caused by the pandemic, whereby dentists were at first unable to see patients and later had to reduce the number of aerosol-producing treatments they could carry out each day.

I have no doubt that the condition of the nation’s teeth has deteriorated during the past couple of years. Nearly 1,000 dentists left the NHS between 2020 and 2021, according to the BDA. However, problems with access to NHS dentistry predate the pandemic. Government spending on dental services has fallen by a third in real terms in the last decade, and the £50 million one-off injection of funding announced recently will barely make a dent in the unprecedented backlog that NHS dentistry now faces.

However, it is also well proven that fluoride, however administered, can strengthen tooth enamel and help teeth to resist decay. The 2018 report from Public Health England made that clear and did not report adverse effects. In Clauses 147 and 148, the Government intend to ensure that the whole country has access to drinking water with at least 1 milligram per litre of water, the level believed to be most effective in reducing tooth decay without the unwanted effects mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Reay, and without waiting for local authorities to initiate schemes. I have to say that I believe Public Health England rather than the noble Lord.

I am always in favour of prevention and of reducing health inequalities, and it is claimed that this measure would do both, but there are some issues which I wish to probe. Currently only two areas in the country, Hartlepool and Braintree, have the optimum level of naturally occurring fluoride in their water. Other areas, covering about only 10% of the population, mainly in the north-east and Birmingham, already have schemes initiated by the local authority. I accept that a number of costly and bureaucratic barriers have been identified to more local authorities initiating such schemes, and I understand these clauses are an attempt to overcome them by making national regulations. These would remove some of the consultation costs from local authorities. However, some local authorities are reluctant to give up their local autonomy on this issue and believe their residents should be consulted before fluoridation occurs. This must be considered.

I have some questions for the Minister, which fall into two categories. The first is about costs and where they fall. We are told in the impact assessment that current schemes will not be affected, and existing and future capital costs will continue to be borne by the Department of Health and Social Care. What will be the additional burden on the funding of the Minister’s department of bearing the capital costs for every area in the country? I understand that regulations will allow for future costs to be shared by his department with water companies. What impact is that expected to have on the water bills paid by households, since the companies will undoubtedly try to pass it on to customers?

Water companies can well afford to pay these costs themselves, rather than take the money from the health budget. This is clear from the eye-wateringly high earnings of their leading directors. We know from a briefing from Yorkshire Water that the costs can be considerable. A few years ago, it did a feasibility study when only one area—Hull City Council—was looking into fluoridation. At the time, it estimated the capital cost to be £1.6 million to £2 million and the annual operation costs to be approximately £330,000 per year. These costs would have fallen on Public Health England and the local authority at the time, but under the new proposals they would be covered by the Department of Health and Social Care.

Over recent years, capital investment in water and sewerage services has been covered just by income from water bills, but investment in infrastructure has not been adequate, since we still have raw sewage being discharged into water courses and leaks wasting water at an unacceptable level. So, we can expect the companies to accept some of the cost of fluoridation themselves, without passing it on to the customer.

Can the Minister also say what is the plan for regular measurement of the fluoride content of water, and at what point in the delivery journey will it occur? What will this cost, and where will the cost fall? Will the Government allow companies to pass this cost on to the consumer too, although they can clearly afford to absorb it? The reason I ask is that water companies share water all the time and there is a possibility that, without frequent monitoring, the fluoride content delivered to customers could turn out to be either too high or too low to be effective.

The second category of question concerns what other proposals for reducing the incidence of tooth decay have been considered by the Government, as mentioned by my noble friend Lord Storey. I have dealt with the availability of NHS dentistry, but it is excess sugar and acids in the diet that cause tooth decay. Sadly, poor diet is a major problem, particularly among poorer children, for whom the most common reason to be admitted to hospital is the need for complex extraction of rotten teeth. Fluoride can, of course, can be administered in other ways: either applied by the dentist or by regular use of fluoride-containing toothpaste—fortunately, most toothpastes contain fluoride. However, many children eat too much sugar, drink too many acidic fizzy drinks and do not brush their teeth regularly.

As my noble friend said, there used to be a school dentistry service to check for problems, and dental nurses used to visit nurseries and primary schools to teach good dental hygiene. I have myself sat in on such a session and it was excellent, but I do not believe it happens any longer. Have the Government costed a return to these schemes? As for diet, we will be dealing with that in a later group of amendments. So, while accepting the potential benefits of what is proposed, I ask the Minister to assure the House of the cost-effectiveness of the measures, explain the impact on family budgets and tell the House what other measures are being considered to achieve the same ends, which we all want to see: better and more equal dental health.

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the amendments in this group, which focus on the need for universal access to dentistry and the introduction of fluoride into water. As my noble friend Lord Hunt said, they are about treatment and prevention, which are equally important when it comes to considering how we tackle tooth decay and oral health. I am grateful to my noble friend, the noble Baronesses, Lady Northover and Lady Walmsley, and the noble Lord, Lord Young, for their support for these amendments.

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[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on cancer and a great supporter of John Baron’s campaign on outcomes. Of course, as noble Lords across the Committee have said, the key to getting better outcomes is early diagnosis, rigorous audit, and proper dissemination across the country of what we know works. I certainly support what the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, is trying to do.

I do not oppose the government amendments outlined by the Minister, despite the rather unusual fact that they were only agreed with the Opposition Front Benches at the last minute—that is, this morning. I thank him for clarifying that; although cancer outcomes were the principal focus of Clause 4, they are not the only objective that should relate to cancer patients. The department has consulted with cancer charities, which, of course, represent many thousands of patients, to ensure that the new legislation meets their needs. Can the Minister say when the effects of Clause 4 will be reviewed and any action, if necessary, taken? Although generally approved by the sector, Macmillan is still concerned about how a focus on survival will affect those who, sadly, have terminal cancer and do not expect to survive. What they need is palliative care and measures to make the quality of their last few months of life as good as possible. Could this issue be a key part of any future evaluation of cancer care?

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

My Lords, we are very pleased to support the government amendments that we have heard outlined. Crucially, they focus on cancer outcomes. As the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, underlined, that includes survival, quality of life, experience of treatment, end-of-life care as well as diagnosis—in other words, the whole experience in treating somebody as a whole person on a journey that they may have to face. I congratulate the Minister on bringing the amendments forward. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, supported by the noble Lords, Lord Aberdare and Lord Vaizey, and others, for highlighting the fact that pancreatic cancer has such an aggressive nature, and yet the symptoms are so silent and often misunderstood that it presents a particular challenge in the context of the care that we are speaking of today.

A focus on outcomes that covers matters other than treatment will be particularly crucial following the backlogs that the pandemic has inevitably led to, with delays in people seeking check-ups and treatment. Macmillan has let us know that more than 31,000 people in England are still waiting for their first cancer treatment, and it has also said of the Bill that for those living with cancer

“not a lot will look different.”

It is therefore crucial that the Minister assures noble Lords that stakeholders are supportive of the changes outlined in this group.

On the point about survival rates lagging behind those of other countries, that is not because the National Health Service is worse than other healthcare systems at treating cancer once it is detected but because it may not be as good at catching cancers in the crucial early stages. In other words, late diagnosis lies behind our comparatively poor survival rates. A key advantage of focusing on outcome measures is that it will give healthcare professionals much greater freedom and flexibility to design their own solutions, which could include running wider screening programmes and better awareness campaigns, and establishing greater diagnostic capabilities at primary care. A further advantage of this new focus is that it will better align NHS priorities with patient needs, which, after all, are core to our discussions on the Bill today.

I have a final and gentle word for the Minister to back up the introductory comment of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. It is of course usual to consult the Opposition and others in advance to ensure that amendments are acceptable and do what is required—in other words, to strengthen the case. I know that this did not happen until very late in this case, and I am sure the Minister will not wish to repeat that practice. In summary, however, we very much welcome these amendments.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I thank the Opposition Front Benches for being so gracious given the fact that we notified them late and did not use the correct procedure. I apologise for that once again and I know that the Bill team also apologises for it. We are all on a steep learning curve, as I am sure all noble Lords acknowledge. I thank both noble Baronesses. I hope the lesson has been learned, and we will not have an excuse next time.

I will address Amendment 294 before I come to our amendments. I thank my noble friend Lord Moylan for tabling it. To reassure him, the pancreatic cancer audit is included in the national cancer audit collaborating centre tender, which is currently live. Some reporting timelines are included in the specification for this audit, developed in partnership with NHS England and NHS Improvement, but I am told that during a live tender the document is commercially sensitive and cannot be shared beyond the commissioning team, as this could risk jeopardising the procurement process. The future contract is anticipated to start in autumn of this year. However, it is not possible to confirm the timelines for a new national audit topic for pancreatic cancer until the procurement completes and the contractual deliverables are signed. Unfortunately, therefore, this cannot be aligned with the passing of the Act.

My noble friend will be aware that NICE clinical guideline NG85 recommends that pancreatic enzyme replacement therapy, or PERT, should be offered to patients with inoperable pancreatic cancer and that consideration should be given to offering PERT before and after tumour removal. NICE acknowledges that this is a priority area for improving the quality of health and social care and has included PERT in its quality standard on pancreatic cancer.

We have taken and will continue to take steps to support Pancreatic Cancer UK’s campaign to encourage greater uptake of PERT by doctors treating pancreatic cancer patients, in line with NICE guidance. We are in the process of commissioning a PC audit and, while the scope of this is not confirmed, we will certainly include this in the scoping of the topic. As I said, NICE acknowledges this as a priority area and, while its guidelines are not mandatory for healthcare professionals, the NHS is expected to take them fully into account in ensuring that services meet the needs of patients.

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[Lord Warner (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly in support of Amendment 289. It is worth remembering that the NHS used to have convalescent beds—I went to one as a boy, recovering from peritonitis. These have disappeared over time. When in the 1980s and 1990s nursing homes were set up in increasing numbers across this country, we found that they ended up on the means-tested side of the boundary between health and adult social care. In a way, the NHS lost out because these resources were on another side of the boundary, which was defended with jesuitical force to make sure that people did not drift into the NHS who might get care that was not means tested but free. We have ended up shooting ourselves quite badly in the foot by allowing these services to drift out of the NHS and into the adult social care system.

Shortly after the 2010 election, I facilitated a proposal from a few large nursing home groups to take recovering patients from hospital to free up acute hospital beds. This was rejected by the Treasury which thought it would lead to large numbers of people who were being means-tested getting free NHS care. In fact, they were two separate groups and the NHS was punishing itself by keeping people in beds in the NHS at high cost. We know that about 25% of the people who are in acute hospital beds should not be there—they need not be there clinically—but they are holding on to those beds because there is nowhere else for them to go within the NHS system. We have ended up unnecessarily blocking beds and spending a lot more money because we cannot put in place a service that the NHS badly needs. I suggest to the Minister that we revisit this issue in the interests of the NHS and its patients.

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for the debate this evening and for the amendments put forward, which have focused on what I would call a complete continuum of care and support where people need it most; my thanks also to the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, for leading the debate. What we hear tonight is the need to drive up standards and availability in what can be accessed for reablement and rehabilitation.

As the noble Lord, Lord Warner, reminds me, I fear that, over time, we have perhaps lost a broader range of provision, and the word “convalescence” has somewhat left our vocabulary. The amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, to ensure that accommodation is available to people who are in rehabilitation—people who no longer need to be in a hospital ward but cannot return to their own home—is creative and practical. I hope that the Minister will look at exploring that idea.

NHS: Nurse Recruitment

Baroness Merron Excerpts

Thursday 27th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I am afraid I disagree with the noble Lord, because we are on track to reach our 50,000 target, particularly because we are not just using one route in. We are using a number of different routes; people can retrain from other courses, and we have apprenticeships. We are looking at completely different, innovative pathways into nursing.

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

My Lords, the Government’s own impact assessment suggests that mandatory vaccination against Covid could lead to the loss of some 73,000 NHS staff in England. When designing their policies, did the Government take into account how many nurses might be among this number? Will the Minister take the opportunity of the Health and Care Bill to bring forward a long-term workforce plan to address the shortages of nurses and other staff?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I congratulate the noble Baroness on bringing up an issue for the Health and Care Bill. In terms of VCOD—vaccination as a condition of deployment—most NHS staff are vaccinated, and those who are reluctant to be vaccinated are being offered one-to-one conversations with management to see whether they can be persuaded to take the vaccine or be redeployed elsewhere.

Health and Care Bill

Baroness Merron Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Wednesday 26th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I will briefly say that I am extremely optimistic about family hubs. They answer the challenge to solve the complexity around integration incredibly well. My noble friend Lord Farmer made the point that one cannot think of a better example of what integration looks like than family hubs. The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, talked clearly and persuasively about the journey they have been on.

My noble friend has made the case for these amendments. Other noble Lords have made the case for updating the legislative framework. I ask the Minister to look carefully at what can be done to bring these laws up to date so that family hubs can thrive, as I believe they will.

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, for introducing this important debate and to other noble Lords who have supported the amendments before us and spoken about how we can improve the support that families will receive through this Bill. As the Family Hubs Network rightly observes,

“prevention is simply listed in the Bill as one of several commissioning requirements of ICBs with no broad mention of children’s health”.

This group of amendments gives us the opportunity to sharpen this.

As we have heard, the issues that families face, in whatever form or shape, do not exist in isolation. In addition to the impact of financial, housing, social and other pressures, the physical and mental health of a child or young person affects the physical and mental health of not just their parents, but their wider family, and vice versa. It makes common sense to facilitate a healthcare system that is designed and resourced to actively take a holistic approach to the many issues that face children and those who care for them.

I cannot help but feel that the points raised today are not new. We have the experience of Sure Start to show us how effective properly integrated family services can be. As the Institute for Fiscal Studies confirmed:

“By bringing together a wide range of early years services for children under 5, Sure Start centres dramatically improved children’s health even through their teenage years.”


Early investment is crucial.

I hope the Minister will be keen to embed change in this Bill to replicate the success that we saw through Sure Start. The first step towards doing this is to make sure that integrated care partnerships are properly required to consider how family help services can be thoroughly integrated into our health and care system, so that family members—no matter what form those families take—are seen as both individuals and groups who have an effect on each other.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I thank my noble friend Lord Farmer and all noble Lords who spoke about their experiences. The creation of integrated care boards represents a huge opportunity to support and improve the planning and provision of services to make sure that they are more joined up and better meet the needs of infants, children and young people.

Before I go into the specific amendments, I make it quite clear, as my noble friend said, that the Government set out in their manifesto a commitment to championing family hubs. We want to see them across the country, but at the same time we must give democratically elected councils the choice to shape how services are delivered, bearing in mind some of the points made by the noble Lords, Lord Mawson and Lord Warner, whom I thank for their experience on this.

The Government agree that it is vital to ensure that ICPs work closely with a range of organisations and services to consider the whole needs of a family when providing health and care support. In preparing the integrated care strategy, the integrated care partnership must involve local Healthwatch and the people who live or work in the area. We are working with NHS England and NHS Improvement on bespoke draft guidance, which will set out the measures that ICBs and ICPs should take to ensure they deliver for babies, children and young people. This will cover services that my noble friend considers part of family help.

In addition, the independent review of children’s social care is still considering its definition of “family help”, and the definition published in The Case for Change may well be further refined as a result of ongoing consultation. It would be inappropriate to define the term in legislation at this stage, pre-empting the full findings of the review and the Government’s response to it. Also, it is important that there should be a degree of local determination as to what should be included in the strategies of ICBs and ICPs. In order for them to deliver for their local populations, a permissive approach is critical.

On Amendment 167, we agree that family hubs are a wonderful innovation in service organisation and delivery for families. The great thing about them is how they emerged organically from local councils over the last decade. I pay tribute to my noble friend for the key role he has played in advocating family hubs and bringing this innovation to the heart of government. The Government strongly support and champion the move but we are clear that they have to be effective and successful—they need to be able to adapt to local needs and circumstances. They also need to be able to operate affordably, making use of a diverse range of local and central funding streams.

In both these regards, local democratically elected councils should hold the ultimate decision-making power over whether to adopt a family hub model and how it should function. As such, I regret that we cannot support the amendment, which would place too much prescription on the decisions and actions of local authorities and risk imposing significant new financial burdens. For this reason, I ask my noble friend to consider withdrawing his amendment.

Health and Care Bill

Baroness Merron Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 3 & Committee stage
Wednesday 26th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, I have added my name to the amendments in this group, so ably introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Crisp. The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, asked: what is the problem to which Clause 54 is the solution? But I want to know why the Government think that Clause 54 is the solution to the real problem. The real problem is that, over recent years, the funding focus has been on revenue to support the greater demands made on the health service, and, apart from occasional injections of extra capital funding, capital budgets have been inadequate. In the meantime, hospital trusts of both types—foundation and NHS—have found it impossible to keep up with the need for repair and maintenance to buildings and plant and, crucially, to invest in modern technologies that would enable them to deliver more effective care.

An NHS Confederation survey prior to the spending review in October last year found that 81% of leaders said an insufficient capital settlement could impact their ability to meet estate and service safety requirements, and 69% of leaders said a poor capital settlement threatens their ability to fully embed digital transformation in their care and even hampers their efforts to maintain staff levels or keep appropriate records of patients who need elective care. Many of our hospitals and clinics are located in very old buildings and some certainly show it, but capital funding has not kept up with demand for years, and this new Secretary of State power in Clause 54 will not solve the wider problem. St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington will need £1 billion to repair the hospital or services could be shut in six to nine years. Many buildings on the site date back to the hospital’s founding in 1845. One part of the hospital can no longer be used, as the building will no longer support the weight of modern hospital beds.

Annual statistics show that each year we do not invest enough and the problem only becomes bigger. We must keep reminding the Government of the consequences of this. It is worth noting that many areas of the country with the worst health outcomes have older estates, so upgrading these estates will lead to better outcomes for these populations. This is a health inequality issue. The problems are not confined to England. I could tell noble Lords some terrible stories about my local hospital in Wales, where health is devolved. It is easy to find examples of maintenance issues from hospitals, as these get a lot of coverage. The headline “Hospital roof crumbling” is always of interest to local media. However, there are also thousands of small community hubs and mental health trusts that desperately need new and updated facilities and equipment too, and they cannot shout as loudly. The backlog currently stands at £9.2 billion, with half of that, as we have heard, described as involving a high or significant risk to staff and patients.

The new powers for the Secretary of State proposed in Clause 54 would restrict the spending of any individual foundation trust in the same way as NHS trusts are currently limited. This may appear to be fair, and I do not oppose the principle of the Secretary of State having the power. However, it appears to me to be contrary to the principle of freedom of the foundation trusts as outlined by the Government when they were set up, and certainly contrary to the agreement made by NHS England and NHS Improvement with the sector through the September 2019 legislative proposal mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, which was the result of detailed negotiations with NHS Providers on behalf of their foundation trust members. The reason given by the Government is that this is in order to avoid the overall health budget being exceeded. However, the power needs to be a very narrow reserve power, to be used when all else has failed, and that is what these amendments would ensure.

The Health and Social Care Committee in another place has made it clear that the powers should be used only as a last resort. It has to be remembered that, if a repair needs to be done on the basis of health and safety but is not done, it is the trust that will be blamed for any harm that comes to staff or patients, not the Secretary of State. They are accountable, and that is right, but it does not help them to keep people safe. The noble Lord, Lord Crisp, has tabled this group of amendments to narrow the scope of the power, to ensure in outline what must be done before it is used and, crucially, in my opinion, to require the agreement of Parliament. Currently, the proposal, like many others in the Bill, cuts Parliament out completely. Where the Government are proposing to wipe out an agreement with the sector which is only just over two years old, there must be compelling reasons, mitigating actions and parliamentary scrutiny.

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, for introducing this group of amendments and setting out for your Lordships that what we need to see is a reasonable system of checks and balances which will serve financial flows and objectives and where, if tensions arise, they can be resolved quickly, fairly and transparently. Certainly, these amendments provide for this.

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[Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (DUP)]

My Lords, there is a process that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, outlined tonight for how this issue could proceed. I believe we should bow to his legal and learned knowledge concerning this matter.

I think society should give everything financially and provide palliative care to those who are in need at the end of life. I trust and pray that this House will send a clear message that we will do everything to ensure people live with decency and honour rather than telling them that we will help them to die.

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

My Lords, this debate has probably exposed more that is not resolved rather than what is resolved. Having listened very closely to the passionate, informed and often personal contributions from noble Lords this evening, I feel there was some inevitability that that is where this debate would lie.

I want to touch on the two amendments before us. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, for clarifying that Amendment 203 is a probing amendment. I am reminded of when we debated these issues in the previous group where your Lordships’ House had great regard for ensuring that a patient’s final wishes should be respected as a kindness. This allows respect and dignity but is also practical in respect of reducing unplanned hospital admissions and other interventions.

There may well be merit in further consideration of the sentiments in the noble Baroness’s amendment that patients should have the opportunity for meaningful conversation about what matters most to them at the end of their life. Of course, the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, is also right about ensuring protection for those who are more vulnerable, and I am sure that, in the course of further discussions, those considerations will be made.

With regard to Amendment 297 put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, obviously your Lordships’ House has heard, as I have, the depth and range of concerns and opinions across this issue. Such an important legislative change as proposed in this amendment would need to be its own topic, in its own Bill. I do not feel that any steps towards such a monumental change should be added via an amendment to a Bill that concerns itself entirely with other matters, as does this Bill.

In conclusion, whatever the views of noble Lords on assisted dying and however strongly held those views are, I believe that your Lordships’ House should do justice to it but that this Bill does not provide that opportunity.

Sugar

Baroness Merron Excerpts

Monday 24th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I always turn to the noble Lord for his experience and advice. It is well known that diabetics, for example, do not look at their sugar content but at their intake of carbohydrates when looking at their diet. I say this as someone whose family has both type 1 and type 2 diabetics, so I understand this issue. I would welcome more information from the noble Lord.

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

My Lords, since its introduction in 2018, the sugar tax on soft drinks has successfully reduced sugar intake and raised more than £880 million, which the Government had promised to spend on tackling childhood obesity. However, it is no longer directly linked to any specific programmes, nor to departmental spending. Can the Minister explain this turnaround to your Lordships’ House, and what assessment has been made of the effect on public confidence that similar taxes will be dedicated to expenditure on improving people’s health?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for raising the success so far of the programme in reducing sugar in drinks. Between 2015 and 2019, we saw a 44% reduction in sales-weighted average total sugar in retailer and manufacturer-branded drinks subject to the soft drinks industry levy. The money raised through the soft drinks industry levy was not linked to any specific programmes or departmental spending. As the noble Baroness will be aware, departmental spend is allocated through spending reviews by the Treasury, and there is quite often some scepticism over hypothec—sorry, probably too much sugar, or not enough sugar—or hypothecated taxes, but we are committed to tackling childhood obesity through a number of different programmes.

Health and Care Bill

Baroness Merron Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Monday 24th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Jones (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly in support of this group of amendments, particularly Amendments 79, 81, 96 and 196, which concern both research and clinical trials. I am grateful to the noble Lords who have put their names to them.

As other noble Lords have noted, the Government have actually recognised the need for integrated care boards to have research among their general duties—but one would be hard pressed to realise from the Bill’s drafting that this was a priority. As the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, said well, the drafting is weak. We need something much more explicit and action oriented. Frankly, “promote” is a vague term that can mean anything or nothing. We need action-oriented language of a kind that puts the NHS and the resources that this country has right at the centre of medical research.

We need an amendment of the type that my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering has put down to give us a national research strategy and join up the national and local levels in achieving it. The noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, has given us many reasons why we need to move on the whole subject of research and make it central to the National Health Service’s mission. We need something that is explicit in charging the NHS to conduct research and enable relevant bodies to do so as well. The results should be exploited in healthcare. Linking research to local needs will also increase their relevance, and the adoption of these results and the obligation to report on them will ensure that things really happen.

I could not find in the drafting any reference to the need to do clinical trials. Surely this is a central element in research and could be extraordinarily advantageous to the UK. As the noble Lord, Lord Patel, has just said, the NHS has a database that is unparalleled in the world. It provides us with an extraordinary advantage. I recall that when I was on the Science and Technology Committee, we heard considerable evidence about the barriers that were put in the way by rather pettifogging EU regulations. I recall the desire, when free of these, to be able to conduct clinical trials. I am aware that some people argue that the UK market is too small, but, with our database, that is not the case—and we can ensure that we have co-operation from abroad.

It is very important that this becomes a central element in our research programmes. It puts us on the map internationally, and it ensures that the NHS, which, after all, is a great consumer of the public expenditure in this country, is also part of wealth creation. That should be part of the result of the research that it conducts.

I do not think that the Government disagree with the thrust of the thinking here, but I very much hope that they will agree that the Bill’s drafting, as it exists at the moment, is inadequate. I hope that, when my noble friend comes to reply, he accepts that the language on both of these elements needs strengthening, giving a central role to research and clinical trials in the NHS.

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords for putting forward these amendments, all of which seek to strengthen the Bill and build on what the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, opened with: the need for clear lines of responsibility and for a joined-up strategy—in other words, for us to get to the point that we are looking for.

My noble friend Lord Hunt spoke of the embodiment, perhaps, of that through a chief innovation officer, who could be a reminder—not on their own—of the need to build in research and innovation as core throughout commissioning. I am sure that the Minister has heard that this debate is a cry for us to embed in the Bill and in our NHS not just a requirement for but a delivery of research and innovation to the appropriate standard to serve the country. It will not just happen on its own.

We have seen significant variation of opportunity for patients to engage in research and disparities in participation reported on geographic and socioeconomic lines, by ethnic origin and across different disease areas. This is due to the fact that the NHS has been unable to prioritise resourcing and delivery of research, which has been a particular feature over the past decade.

In the Bill, we have a major opportunity to embed a research-active culture—words used by the noble Baroness, Lady Harding—within the NHS which could build on the response to Covid-19, which the noble Lord, Lord Patel, emphasised. That response saw more NHS sites, staff and patients engage in research than ever before. Let us not waste this opportunity.

The Bill offers little different to the Health and Social Care Act 2012, which also did not and does not mandate clinical research activity, stating just a duty for clinical commissioning groups “to promote” research. Your Lordships will notice the similarity in wording in the current Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, is quite right, as are other noble Lords, to speak of the weakness of just using the words “to promote”. This set of amendments is about how we make it actually happen. The amendments are about mandating integrated care boards to conduct research and to monitor and assess innovation, because without that, it will just not happen.

Legislation is indeed a critical element, but it is important to stress that it must be accompanied by the necessary infrastructure: for example, through staffing levels—to which we will return in our next debate—research capability, digital resources and tools and access to services, as well as efficient trial approval processes, the ability reliably to recruit patients, the offering of guidance and, of course, dedicated staff time for research. All of those will make the legislation actually mean something.

As well as a strengthened legislative mandate which moves beyond the current duty simply to promote research, it would support patients, clinicians and NHS organisations across the country to have equal access to the benefits brought about by research participation. This will be better for patients, give greater staff satisfaction and deliver economic benefits not just for the NHS but for the broader economy. The noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, talked about the life sciences being a major player as a contributor to our economic well-being and prosperity in this country—something also emphasised by my noble friend Lord Davies.

Such a mandate would also ensure support for levelling up and make it possible to address health inequalities. This in turn would support the ambition set out in the Government’s clinical research vision: to make access and participation in research as easy as possible for everyone across the UK, including those in rural, diverse and underserved populations. I hope the Minister will take the opportunity to reflect on the points made in this debate, because this group of amendments provides an opportunity to strengthen the Bill to actually deliver.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

Like many of the debates on this Bill in Committee, this has been a fascinating one. It has been really interesting to hear from experts who themselves have engaged in clinical research. I start by thanking my noble friends Lady McIntosh of Pickering and Lady Blackwood and the noble Lords, Lord Sharkey and Lord Kakkar, for bringing this debate before the Committee today. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, for his points about the arts and social prescribing.

Before I turn to the amendments, perhaps I could make two personal reflections. One is from my early academic career as a postdoctoral research fellow. I saw the benefit of taking the results of my research directly into my teaching. It made the courses more dynamic—it was not just a repeat of last year’s slides for this year’s students—and it showed what progress we were making in that field of research.

Health and Care Bill

Baroness Merron Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Monday 24th January 2022 Lords Chamber

We are a wealthy country. Traditionally, we have imported these skills, all too often from places that have a gross shortage—even far greater shortages than we have. We have to stop doing that. We have to train significantly more people than we need, because quite a number of them will, for whatever personal reasons, decide to go elsewhere, even if we are providing them with the best possible working environment we can. So we have to train vastly more people. That is our global responsibility.

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

My Lords, I start by acknowledging—as I am sure we all do in your Lordships’ House—the value, commitment and contribution of the workforce who are the backbone of our health and social care services. We owe them our gratitude. The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, and my noble friends Lady Whitaker and Lord Bradley are all absolutely right to acknowledge the breadth and depth of the workforce: that it is a team, and that each part of that team is absolutely connected with the other.

I very much agree with the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, who said that this debate is absolutely central to all that we are here to discuss and to all that patients need from our health and social care services. I am extremely grateful to noble Lords who have tabled and supported amendments and spoken in this debate. All of them have made a compelling case for a workforce plan that will, if these amendments are taken on board by the Minister, feature a laser-like focus on valuing the entire staff team, along with providing planning, financial resources, responsibility, reviewing and reporting—all essential features of any effective strategy. This begs the question: if we see these pillars in a strategy in every other part of our economy and of the way that our whole society functions, why can we not have this for the NHS and social care?

I am glad to have tabled an amendment that calls for a duty on the Secretary of State to ensure that there are safe staffing levels—this was very clearly emphasised by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, in her opening to this debate. This is extremely important because it places a duty where it ought to be and allows examination and transparency.

Of course, we all know that the situation we are discussing today is not new: the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, spoke to your Lordships’ House about a litany of unfulfilled promises and missed opportunities in workforce planning. The noble Baroness, Lady Harding, spoke of her efforts to resolve this and explained the need, which we see in these amendments, to introduce improvements to the Bill to resolve the matter of workforce supply against the demand that is there. All of that requires a lead-in time, and it has to be underpinned by the requisite funds—there is no shortcut to this. In England, we now have a whole website that is full of guidance, and NHS boards are required to take this into account, and yet there is no national workforce plan or credible plan for funding. Until there is, the ICBs will not be able to plan either. The noble Lord, Lord Warner, rightly pointed out that this is not an either/or situation: we need a national workforce plan, and it has to have the funds to deliver it.

I will draw the Minister’s attention to particular aspects of the amendments: explicit recognition of the need to consult with the workforce through trade unions; that planning must cover health and social care; that timescales for reporting should be testing but not too onerous; and that the financial projections in any workforce plan should be subjected to some level of independent expert verification, through the Office for Budget Responsibility, for example.

Behind all of these discussions, we started in a place highlighted by the noble Baronesses, Lady Masham, Lady Walmsley, Lady Watkins and Lady Bennett, and other noble Lords, who spoke of the crisis of the levels of vacancies that we now see and the impossibility of dealing with this without preparation and resource. Any national plan for the workforce needs to be built from the bottom up and not imposed from the top. I hope that the Minister will consider this when he looks at ways to improve the Bill.

I will raise a couple of related points. The scale of the workforce challenge is well established, but it goes far deeper than just numbers and structures. It goes to issues around workforce terms and conditions and career development, particularly in social care, which the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, brought our attention to. It also has to deal with cultural issues; there is a clear indication that all is not entirely well in the NHS when it comes to diversity, whistleblowing and aspects of how staff are or are not nurtured and supported.

I have one final specific issue to raise, which we have heard about in the debate today and that I would like to extend: international recruitment. I ask that the Government do more to prevent international recruitment, particularly of nurses and midwives, from countries where it is unethical to recruit, and that this be a part of any future strategy. The existing code of practice on international recruitment is not legally enforceable, so when Unison or others report breaches of the code by recruitment agencies, there is no provision for sanctions to be brought against rogue operators. I ask the Minister to confirm that the code of conduct will be promoted and will be enforced.

The situation in which we find ourselves is fixable. I hope the Minister, in his response tonight, will show your Lordships’ House that he understands the situation, that he understands what needs to be done and that he will do it.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Kamall) (Con)]

Well, this has been another fascinating debate, and I welcome the contributions from all noble Lords speaking from many years of experience, including former chief executives of the National Health Service and former Health Ministers, medical experts and practitioners. I am grateful to the many noble Lords who have laid amendments in this group; there clearly is a strength of feeling, not only in this Chamber but in the other place. To cut a long story short, this will clearly require more discussion.

However, I am duty bound to give the Government’s perspective on this. We have committed to publishing a plan for elective recovery and to introduce further reforms to improve recruitment and support our social care workforce, as set out in the White Paper, People at the Heart of Care: Adult Social Care Reform. I take the point of the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, that he is aware of many expectations that have passed, and I hope that this time we surprise him. We are also developing a comprehensive national plan for supporting and enabling integration between health, social care and other services that support people’s health and well-being.

The monthly workforce statistics for October 2021 show there are record numbers of staff working in the NHS, with over 1.2 million full-time equivalent staff, which is about 1.3 million in headcount. But I am also aware of the point of noble Lord, Lord Warner, that it should not just be about the number of people working—it is about much more than numbers and quantity; it is about quality and opportunities. We are also committed to delivering 50,000 more nurses and putting the NHS on a trajectory towards a sustainable long-term future. We want to meet our manifesto commitment to improve retention in nursing and support return to practice, and to invest in and diversify our training pipeline, but also, as many Lords have said, to ethically recruit internationally.

On that, I want to make two points. The first is this. When I had a similar conversation with the Kenyan Health Minister and expressed the concern we had about taking nurses who could work in that country, the Minister was quite clear that they actually train more nurses than they have capacity for in their country—they see this as a way to earn revenue. There have been many studies on how remittances are a much more powerful way of helping countries, rather than government-to-government aid. With that in mind, we recruit ethically, and we have conversations.

The second point is also from my own experience. I was on a delegation to Uganda a few years ago and I remember speaking to a local about the issue of the brain drain and our concerns. We were talking about immigration, and he said, “You do realise, though, it is all very well for you to patronise me and say that I should stay in this country, but sometimes the opportunities are not here for me in this country. You talk about a brain drain; I see my brain in a drain”. Sometimes we have to look at the issues of individuals who are concerned that they do not have opportunities in their countries, even if the numbers dictate otherwise. Having said all that, we are committed to the WHO ethical guidelines, but I also think that we should be aware. Look at the way that, post war, the people of the Commonwealth came and helped to save our public services. I hope we are not going to use this as an excuse to keep people out, though I understand the concern that we have to make sure that we recruit ethically internationally.

Health and Care Bill

Baroness Merron Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 20th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)]

My Lords, I support these amendments, subject to the economic difficulties. As I listened to the local Baroness, Lady Brinton, I wondered whether the amendments might be strengthened by some reference to the timescale in which they must be implemented. That might have some beneficial effect for many people who are waiting.

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome these amendments, which relate to the National Institute for Clinical Excellence—NICE. I thank all noble Lords for tabling these amendments and for their contributions today, which certainly expanded my knowledge of the subject, as I am sure they did across the Committee. The debate has shown that there is a need for change, as I am sure the Minister has heard, to better equip the National Health Service to provide the patient what they need when they need it.

The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, spoke clearly about hurdles that must be overcome, whether they are bureaucratic, process, budgetary or administrative. All these hurdles get in the way of the end result: meeting the needs of patients. That, I believe, is what this debate is focused on.

NICE is well recognised as a partner to our NHS. Its objective approach and evidence-based analysis rightly gain respect. However, as my noble friend Lord Hunt said—he can now be called the first Minister for NICE—although the National Health Service is full of innovation, it is also slow to pick up on it; that point was emphasised by the noble Lord, Lord Warner. That begs the question: what kind of partner should NICE be to the NHS? Is it going to be an enabling partner, or will it frustrate at times? Of course, we all want to see NICE in that fully enabling capacity.

However, beyond what NICE approves in terms of treatments, pathways or otherwise, there must be procedures for it to implement and connect effectively to patients’ needs. We know that no system or set of procedures will ever be perfect; we have heard that today. Understandably, therefore, as the Minister has heard, pressure and a will for change—in a positive sense—is contained in these amendments. The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, spoke about how important it is to have evidence-based healthcare and to have known guidelines and see them complied with, as is right and proper.

There are cautionary considerations to note in this debate; we have heard some of them. One is whether it is wise to put what in some cases appear to be operational requirements in the Bill. I am sure the Minister will address this. The new world is certainly paying a lot of attention to flexibilities. We want to make sure that anything contained in the Bill does not inadvertently work in another direction.

My understanding is that NICE guidance is mandated, in effect, with the guidelines somewhat less so. Amendment 54 contains a proposal to reinforce the intention that, once a treatment has been properly assessed and recommended, all patients should be able to gain the benefit. We know, and we have heard in this debate, that this does not always happen, and that clinical commissioning groups follow different policies. However, in considering the amendment at face value, it is important that we consider what impact this latitude might have. I am sure we are all keen not to accidentally invoke some kind of fallout, such as taking away all leeway from commissioners. At present, they can depart if they can set out an objective case for doing so; for example, with requests for certain drugs and therapies through individual funding requests.

Similarly, it would be unfair if a patient could cross an integrated care board border and receive a treatment that was not available in another ICB area. That would seem inadvertently to achieve what we do not want to achieve: the worst of a postcode lottery. Equally, if we have locally based approaches, the reality is that some localities will differ in their priorities and services. I know that we will return to this topic many times in our consideration of the Bill because the care that patients receive should certainly be equitable and fair and not based on where they live.