NHS: Waiting Lists

Lord Bassam of Brighton Excerpts

Monday 26th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

The length of time to wait should always be a clinical decision; I completely endorse that. CCGs have responsibility to manage demand according to local needs, but in the end, it must be a clinical decision.

[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)]

My Lords, in a written reply to me, HL 5459, the Minister said that vacancy data was not available for doctors, nurses and consultants in hospital trusts in Sussex, Surrey and Kent, whereas local recruitment advisers suggest that there is a real crisis. Why cannot the human resources element of the National Health Service provide that basic data? As the noble Lord seemed to acknowledge earlier, our chances of our reducing waiting lists are much lessened if we cannot understand where the vacancies are and put people in those jobs.

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

Vacancy data is available. If it was not available on the particular footprint that the noble Lord asked for, I would point him in the direction of data published last week by NHS England on vacancies, which is always a topic of much interest in this House. Over the past three quarters, that shows a slightly improving picture, but clearly there is a lot more to do.