Covid-19: Antiviral Pills

Lord Bethell Excerpts

Monday 31st January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

One of the interesting things about having this role is the number of different stakeholders I speak to and all the wonderful research into vaccines and antivirals for different conditions. I am not aware of any current research into the condition that the noble Baroness refers to. However, just because I am not aware, does not mean it is not happening. I will find out and write to the noble Baroness.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Boateng (Lab)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I am afraid I do not know the answer to that, but I will write to both my noble friends.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, antivirals have shown their efficacy against HIV, hepatitis C, influenza, and now, thanks to the Eddie Gray Antivirals Taskforce, against Covid—but they work only if they attack the disease at the very earliest stage, often before symptoms even manifest themselves. We are going to see a great investment in antivirals, so what steps is the NHS taking to adapt to this new form of medicine distribution and to get antivirals into the hands of patients at the earliest possible stage? Five days simply is not early enough.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for all the work that he put in during his time as the relevant Minister in pushing the Antiviral Taskforce and ensuring the rollout of these antivirals. Since December, patients who are eligible and receive a positive PCR result are referred for treatment into a Covid medicines delivery unit. In addition, the UK Health Security Agency has sent PCR tests to around 1.3 million patients who are eligible for antivirals—bearing in mind what the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, said, which I need to look into. We are also working with the devolved Administrations to look at whether the NHS could deploy antivirals to a wider group of patients, with an emphasis on rapid identification and treatment, and assuming that we see positive results from the Panoramic trial.

Health and Care Bill

Lord Bethell Excerpts

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

It begs the question, therefore, why my noble friend Lord Forsyth would want to table such an amendment. Is it possible he believes that the drafting of a Bill by government would confer legitimacy on an otherwise non-government policy? If so, this amendment should be treated with great care. The value and worth of our terminally ill, mentally competent adults are too great to be dealt with in such a way. Are we really arguing that because end-of-life palliative care is so patchy, we need to introduce euthanasia? Surely we need a universal service of palliative care rather than this amendment.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I would like to speak in support of Amendment 297 from my noble friend Lord Forsyth and specifically address the issue of timing that the amendment refers to:

“The Secretary of State must, within the period of 12 months beginning with the day on which this Act is passed, lay before Parliament a draft Bill,”


and so on. I feel competent to address this point because I was asked myself, when I was Minister, whether the Government should support a debate with a Government-supported Bill on this issue. There were five conclusions that I reached during my thoughts on the matter.

The first was that a Private Member’s Bill, however worthy, was just not going to get across the Table. It was like a soggy piece of spaghetti—very difficult to push across. This issue is very complex, and a large amount of consultation is needed, quite rightly on such a delicate issue, that only a Government can engage in. PMBs may be all right for cosmetic fillers, but not for assisted dying.

Secondly, on soundings with the professions, there was clearly a massive change in the sentiments of the medical professions, and the appetite and desire for reform was profound, among both the membership and the leadership. That was something we had to take account of.

Thirdly, reform in like-minded countries such as Canada, New Zealand and even Ireland had changed the international context for this issue. We cannot duck the fact that Britain is actually behind the curve on this matter.

Fourthly, public opinion has moved a long way on this. The noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, referred to this.

Lastly, there was a large amount of interest, privately, among parliamentary colleagues in engaging on this subject, particularly among those who were not necessarily highly focused on the issue.

My conclusion was that the time was right to have this debate. My message to the Minister is that it is right that the inconsistencies and delicacies of this issue are tackled by the Government and soon. In the phrase of TS Eliot in “The Waste Land”:

“HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME”.

[Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (DUP)]

My Lords, I rise to make just a short contribution. I listened carefully to the words of the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, for whom I have great personal respect. I watched him in another place and saw his great ability in debate, and I have no doubt whatever that he has much to contribute to the debates here in this House and will do so in the future. However, I have to say that I profoundly disagree with him in this case.

The noble Lord said that he had changed his mind on assisted suicide. He mentioned personal circumstances within the family and then he said that he thought about his own personal circumstances if he were in that position. I do not believe that that is the best way to bring legislation forward, based on your own personal circumstances; you are therefore bringing legislation in for the whole country to meet your own personal circumstances. I have empathy with him and understand the personal circumstances he has had to face.

I say to the noble Lord that I come from a different perspective. I have personal experience of the awful pain of the suicide of a loved one. I know what it is for a family member to come to their wits’ end because of their personal circumstances, where cancer had ravaged the whole family circle, even taking a little child of four, and they could not face life any more. Were they terminally ill? I tell your Lordships, they had died within because of their circumstances. Were they mentally competent to make a decision? They made a decision, and I am sad to say that the rest of the family circle has had to live with that awful pain within their hearts.

This is not an easy situation. I understand that we say that we are not talking about the particulars of a Bill, but this amendment says:

“The Secretary of State must, within the period of 12 months beginning with the day on which this Act is passed, lay before Parliament a draft Bill to permit terminally ill, mentally competent adults legally to end their own lives with medical assistance.”


That is certainly assisted suicide. I heard other noble Lords saying that this was simply asking for parliamentary time to have a debate. We had a long debate in this House on the Bill in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, which is in fact progressing.

I notice that the noble Lord is shaking his head. I have to ask this question. Numerous Private Members’ Bills are going through this House and are progressing, perhaps at a slow speed. Why is this one different from the others? Do we ask the Government simply to pick this one out and forget about all the rest, or are we saying that they should do it in a timely fashion? Let the Government give this special time to those that are already in that process, and when it comes to the Bill in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, time can be given for that to progress and to provide a Bill.

Over these past two years this whole nation has been fighting to save life, not take it. We have spent billions of pounds in trying to do that and I pay tribute to the health service for all its efforts. An assisted suicide law, however well intended, would alter society’s attitude towards the elderly, the seriously ill and the disabled, sending a message that assisted suicide is an option that they ought to consider. Society should not allow a double standard in allowing some people an assisted suicide while we do all we can to prevent young people and other vulnerable groups committing suicide—

Health and Care Bill

Lord Bethell Excerpts

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

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, from the perspective of a clinician, I support this amendment very strongly. If it is not adopted, I can see it being imperative, in any doctor’s consultation, to warn the patient that their data could be accessible and to be very careful about what is recorded in the clinical record. Very often, patients come to see a doctor, possibly at a very early stage of slightly disordered thinking or because they have undertaken a potentially high-risk activity, often in the sexual domain, and are worried that they may have contracted some condition or other. If you inhibit that ability to see a doctor early, you will further drive people into whatever condition is beginning to emerge, so it will not be known about until later. That applies particularly in mental health, where early intervention might prevent a condition from escalating.

I can see that, without an amendment such as the one proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, every clinical consultation will have to be conducted with extreme caution, because of potential access to data.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I an enormously grateful for this debate, because this clause and related clauses are critical both to achieving the digital transformation aims of the NHS, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and to getting the healthcare system to work better together.

I am also grateful for the humanity and testimony of several noble Lords, exemplified by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, who spoke movingly about the practicalities of patients going to see their doctors. I know from my own life and from my family how important it is to protect those relationships.

That is why I would like to hear a little from the Minister about what protections there are, because health data is and should be treated as a special category of data. What additional protections are there in the use of health data, including in the common law duty of confidentiality, the role of the National Data Guardian, the way the Caldicott principles will be used and the national data opt-out? What reassurances do we have that those special considerations will apply to this clause and its related components?

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I agree with my noble friend Lord Hunt and those speakers who expressed their concern about the open-endedness of what is in the Bill at the moment and the lack of protection for patient data. I look forward to the Minister’s reply on this.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Warner (CB)]

My Lords, briefly, I support these amendments, partly from my own experience as a director of social services and Children’s Commissioner, but also because of the points that the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, raised.

I have three key points from history. As a director of social services in the 1980s and 1990s, I offloaded my local authority family centres to the voluntary sector because a survey of parents suggested that they would not come to a service run by the organisation that was likely to take away their children. That was a perfectly rational position and we should listen to what people say about that.

Fast forward to 1999 and parenting orders under the Crime and Disorder Act. We find that compulsion brought parents to the party but, when they actually attended, they found—not so much men but women—that they were being treated and given skills that enabled them to manage children, largely teenage children, much better than they had been. It was a great shame that we used the criminal justice system to bring people to a parenting tuition experience that they should have been given many years before.

This is a final point from history. Michael Gove made me—this was madness on my part, as well as his—children’s commissioner for the failing Birmingham City Council children’s services. Ofsted report after Ofsted report had been telling them of their deficiencies. We found that the group they could not handle, for which they had no effective responses, was teenagers. If we are to make any progress in helping people to help the family unit, we need to address the support given to parents during the teenage years, because they are really struggling, particularly mums.

[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.

Health and Care Bill

Lord Bethell Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Thursday 13th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mawson (CB)]

My Lords, I did not want to speak in this part of the discussion but I will make a few comments. I absolutely support what the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, and the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, have been saying.

When I first arrived in Bromley-by-Bow 37 years ago this year, I found on my doorstep the largest artistic community outside New York and none of the systems had even noticed or understood its significance. Over the last 37 years, we have been exploring the whole arts and health agenda and the massive impact it can have on local people’s lives.

When we began to put the Olympic project together —as I said on Tuesday, I was involved in it from day one for 19 years—we took that really seriously and engaged with that large artistic and creative community in health, jobs and skills, education et cetera. That £1.2 billion development going on at the moment in the middle of the Olympic park, bringing together University College London, the London College of Fashion, Sadler’s Wells, the V&A, the BBC orchestra and others, is all about this innovation agenda. It is moving it to scale. If this is to happen, we need the systems of the state and the public sector to learn from this entrepreneurial behaviour, which is happening on the ground, in real places and now to scale, and to understand the detail of what it means for the macro systems of the NHS.

I will say more about place later today, but I thank the noble Baroness for making those points, and the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, because this is fundamental. It relates to the fundamental question: what is a human being? A human being is fundamentally a creative being. Health and creativity and, I suggest, entrepreneurship and doing things, are fundamentally connected.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I came face to face with the nation’s health inequalities every morning in the departmental Covid response group, the COBRA meetings and the COBRA gold, when we went through the hospitalisation details and ICU data and heard stories from the front line of how people who had comorbidities particularly associated with obesity were filling up our hospitals as the virus spread through the country in wave after wave. That health inequality hit this country hard in very real terms. It cost a lot of lives, caused a lot of misery and cost our health system an enormous amount of money. It cost this country and its economy a huge amount of money and it is time that we came to terms with that challenge and solved the problem.

As a number of noble Lords have pointed out, the NHS must step up to its responsibilities in this area. There are complex reasons for these inequalities; some are environmental, some are behavioural and some are to do with access. But the NHS and whole healthcare system must realise that it needs to be involved in all aspects of those, and prioritise and be funded accordingly. The Bill already does an enormous amount to change the healthcare system’s priorities. Putting population at the heart of the ICSs is one really good example of that.

To anticipate some of his remarks, I know that the Minister will point to the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities. As the noble Lord pointed out, however, it has a tiny budget and cannot take responsibility for the nation’s health. Our councils are stony broke, as I found in my experience of dealing with them over the last two years. There is no one else to do this; this is not someone else’s problem. This is to do with the British healthcare system, and it needs to stand up to that responsibility. Zero progress has been made in the round over the last few years and we have gone backwards in the last two years in a big way. We need to make this a massive priority.

This is a fantastic Bill; I am really supportive of it. It came from the healthcare system originally. In this one area, however, there is a graphic lacuna that needs to be addressed. The noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, put it so well in his inimitable way. The prioritisation of inequality must be put in the Bill and it needs to be heard throughout the healthcare system that this is the new, central priority that needs to be added to everyone’s job description.

If, for some reason, we do not do that there will be huge consequences. The healthcare system is unsustainable in its current form. We cannot continue to have a large part of the population carrying grievous comorbidities or disease and afflictions which are undiagnosed or not properly mended turning up in our hospitals at a very late stage and costing a fortune to mend. These health inequalities, whether they relate to disease, injury or behavioural issues such as obesity, are costing us a fortune. Only by putting tackling inequality on the face of the Bill can we really give it the priority it deserves.

I also say to the Minister that there is a sense of political jeopardy about this as well. We went into the last election committed to levelling up on health. We have gone backwards in the last two years through no fault of the Government, but if the Government do not step up to their responsibilities in this area, and if the NHS and the healthcare system do not change their priorities, the voters will judge us extremely harshly. For that reason, I urge the Minister to listen to this debate and look very carefully at ways of amending the Bill.

[Baroness Neuberger (CB)]

My Lords, I want to pay tribute, as other noble Lords have, to the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, for her very thoughtful introduction. It is remarkable and absolutely wonderful to see consensus breaking out across the Committee. I will speak specifically to Amendments 152, 156 and 157 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, whose words on the need to make this really serious by stating it on the face of the Bill I echo.

I am a former chief executive of the King’s Fund and am currently chair of University College London Hospitals and Whittington Health. These issues are very dear to my heart and the hearts of those institutions. I also want to say thank you to Crisis for its briefing and add to the words of the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, in praise of Pathway, which has done the most extraordinary work in this area over very many years.

I want to talk particularly about the NHS-funded Find & Treat service, which was set up 13 years ago and is run by UCLH, which I chair. This service was set up in response to a TB outbreak in London and aimed to provide care for people experiencing homelessness and people facing other forms of social exclusion. The service did exactly what it says on the tin: it went out and found people—and still does—who were at risk of contracting TB, wherever they were sleeping, and offered them diagnosis and treatment. Back in 2011, a study concluded that this service had been not only effective in helping to treat people with TB who were experiencing homelessness but cost effective in doing so, both in terms of costs saved to the health service and improved quality and length of life for the people receiving care. Fast-forward a decade and the evolution of this service meant it could be similarly mobilised at the beginning of the Covid pandemic. It provided urgent and necessary care to people who continue to experience the poorest health outcomes.

The King’s Fund published a report in 2020 on delivering health and care for people sleeping rough. It supported the need for inclusion health services to be provided much more broadly than at present. Importantly, it also concluded that local leadership is absolutely vital in crafting that approach and said that local leaders should model effective partnership working across a range of different organisations.

Embedding inclusion health—I cannot say I really like the term, but everybody knows what it means—at the level of integrated care partnerships will help ensure that our healthcare system can no longer ignore, forget or overlook people who are all too often considered “hard to treat”, despite proven interventions showing the opposite. It will ensure that integrated care partnerships and systems take that vital first step towards closing the gap of the most significant health inequalities in our society by having to recognise and consider people facing extreme social exclusion and poor health outcomes in their local areas.

We all know that there will be considerable discussion during the course of this Bill on the need not to be overly prescriptive and burdensome to ICSs and ICPs by way of legal duties. But ICSs and ICPs know all too well the realities of failing to support people with complex and overlapping needs. I know that the chair of my own North Central London ICS, Mike Cooke, is sympathetic to the spirit of these amendments and believes it is important that extra steps are taken to meet the health needs of the most excluded, such as street homeless people. The chief executive of UCLH, David Probert, and the chief executive of Whittington Health, Siobhan Harrington, concur in thinking that if we extend the aspiration to reach out to excluded groups to something that all ICSs, ICPs and systems must focus on, it would be hugely beneficial for planning and joining up systems to avoid inappropriate or unnecessary admissions and poor care planning. Plenty of people want to do this within our health system.

I support Amendments 152, 156 and 157 and look forward to working with the Government and colleagues across the House and within the NHS to ensure their success in achieving a critical and long-needed systemic change to our health and care system. Addressing the needs of the most excluded has to be on the face of the Bill.

Health and Care Bill

Lord Bethell Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 7th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his extremely good introduction to the Bill, He has taken to the job incredibly quickly, taking on this massive Bill so enthusiastically; it is incredibly impressive. I also make a personal testimony to the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, who I knew from the battle against the pandemic over the last two years. His expertise and experience were brought to bear against that awful disease, and I am so pleased to see him now in the Chamber contributing to this important debate.

The Minister is right: this is a proportionate and welcome Bill that enables us to make important changes. The noble Lord, Lord Stevens, is right that it came originally from the health and care system. We should remember that when we comment on it, because it is an omnibus Bill that gives those at the front line the tools they need to improve the system. I completely endorse those who have spoken about the importance of collaboration. My noble friend Lady Harding spoke much more fluently than I possibly could. Medical clinical care very often involves complex issues that need a huge amount of collaboration and work to succeed. Therefore, this Bill should try to smooth out anything that creates inadvertent competition, barriers to discussion or hurdles to getting things done. I think that it gives the system the tools to be able to do that.

I also endorse those who have talked about the importance of prevention. The noble Baroness, Lady Cavendish, is absolutely right; the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, called it a challenge that many advanced economies are facing and he is entirely right. Prevention is key. The pandemic showed us that our current health system is living beyond its means, and we have nothing but challenges ahead of us. The population health measures enabled by the ICSs are potentially critically important. This Bill only enables that potential; I would endorse its power and encourage the Minister to run really hard at prevention.

That is why I support Clause 4 on cancer detection, which was introduced in the other place. It touches on the point referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Cavendish; by putting an emphasis on outcomes rather than the operational details of cancer detection, it is trying to introduce an important inflection point that I think could be duplicated elsewhere. That is also why I support Schedule 17 on junk food advertising; we have to seize the nettle on that. There was so much sadness in the daily meetings that I used to attend in ICU units. When the numbers of people being intubated were ticking up, so often they were because of comorbidities created by overweight. We need to tackle our obesity epidemic; that is why Schedule 17 is so important. I would also endorse those who have supported the work on hymenoplasty; while I welcome the Government’s moves in this area so far, I think they can go further.

What I really want to endorse is innovation. Data has been mentioned by a large number of noble Lords. The noble Baroness, Lady Cavendish, talked a bit about productivity; the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, talked about patient care; one noble Lord talked about safety. They are all absolutely right. Clauses 81 to 87 in Part 2 are critical, and I would like to hear the Minister’s endorsement of those. I also support the commitment to research. The noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, spoke very well—much better than I could—about the case for strengthening ICSs’ commitment to research. If the NHS is to achieve what it needs to achieve, it needs to double down on its ability to deliver research; this is an area that the Minister should very firmly commit to looking at, as the Bill makes its progress.

NHS: Primary Care Surgeries

Lord Bethell Excerpts

Wednesday 24th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

The noble Baroness will understand that it is not for the Government to intervene in the decisions of CCGs. All who believe in devolution and decisions being made as close to the people as possible believe that we should not be interfering. These decisions are made by CCGs and it is not for the Government to interfere.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I entirely welcome the Minister’s assertion that much of what is great about the NHS is the collaboration with international partners and the private sector. During the pandemic, many things that went well, including the vaccine, relied on that. With a special session of the World Health Assembly next week to discuss new global agreements on pandemic preparedness, what steps will the department be taking to foster international and business collaboration?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for that important question. International engagement remains crucial to tackling the pandemic and ensuring future resilience. In my first few weeks in the job, I have had a number of meetings, at bilateral, G7 and other levels, to make sure that we are fostering international health partnerships. “It is also really important that we understand the contribution the private sector can make towards making the NHS better for all of us.” Those are the words of Alan Milburn, also a former Labour politician.

Dementia: Art and Music-based Interventions

Lord Bethell Excerpts

Monday 22nd November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

The NICE quality standard on dementia, published in June 2019, includes guidelines for offering activities and social prescribing. They are also included in the NHS long-term plan. Obviously, different components are modelled that are social prescribe-enabled—not only music but other art-based activities. The education question will be for my noble friend in the Department for Education, but if the noble Baroness can write to me, I am sure that we can get the answer.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, music therapy is also increasingly helping Covid patients hit by inflammation and fibrosis that causes shortness of breath—a horrible condition. The Breathe programme from the ENO and Imperial College has classical-singing coaches providing psychological and physiological therapy to great effect. Can the Minister endorse this kind of social prescribing, and can he commit to meeting Dr Harry Brünjes and the Breathe team, which is seeking to take this programme nationally?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for that question. As an amateur musician—I stress “amateur”—I know that there is no better feeling than when you connect with your audience as a live musician. Music tugs at your heartstrings. Music touches your soul. But it can also unlock the mind. This shows the importance of music in social prescribing.

New Hospitals

Lord Bethell Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I hope that the noble Lord will recognise that whenever a new project is started and there is a decision to build a new hospital in a community, it surely makes sense to look at whether there is space on existing sites. Otherwise, if we start criticising new hospitals on existing sites, there may be a perverse disincentive for a hospital to say, “Well, let’s build elsewhere”. when there is a perfectly good site. It is important, whatever you call it, whatever the semantics, to recognise that we are building modern, digital, sustainable hospitals for the future.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, we very much welcome the investment in physical buildings, but the modernisation of the NHS also depends on digital infrastructure and training. Will the Minister please tell us what steps he is taking towards a programme of technological improvements that are needed to modernise the NHS?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for the question—I have picked up many of the things that he started when he was in post. One of the great things about being the Minister for Technology, Innovation and Life Sciences is having a real ability to drive through digitisation of the health service, making sure that we have a modern health service that is fit for the future, so that if you are a patient in one part of the country and something happens to you, all your information is available elsewhere for the clinicians at the time and you get the best possible care. That is something that we should be celebrating.

Gametes and Embryos: Storage Limit

Lord Bethell Excerpts

Tuesday 9th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for raising this very important issue, because not everyone is aware of the biological facts around fertility, particularly the decline of fertility with age. If a woman freezes her eggs in her 20s, she has a higher chance of success than if she does it in her 30s. In fact, while IVF treatment has improved over the years, the success rates of IVF are still only around 30%, so it is important that as many women and couples know as much as possible. On the detailed questions that she asked, I will write to the noble Baroness.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I am enormously encouraged by the Minister’s warm words and look forward to holding him to account for them. We know that women have a much better success rate when freezing their eggs at a younger age. However, the Minister knows that there are also proposals to introduce requirements to renew storage permissions every 10 years. What arrangements is the Minister considering to put in place to ensure that this does not become a bureaucratic nightmare and does not create disappointment for those who somehow do not keep up to date?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for his work on the subject when he was the responsible Minister to help change the policy so that all people, regardless of medical need, may benefit from greater choice about when to start their family. The 10-year renewal periods will be put in place to give people the opportunity to decide whether they wish to continue with their storage of gametes or embryos. The department is currently working with the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority to set out the plans for detailed implementation, including on how the renewal periods should be handled by fertility clinics to ensure that they work.

Fertility clinics will be expected to contact people storing their gametes or embryos a year before a renewal period has ended, so there would be 12 months’ notice. In addition, people will have a six-month grace period following the expiry of any renewal period, in which they can get in touch with clinics to re-engage storage if they wish. I am sorry that I am going on longer than usual, but this is an important issue. It is our view that we would provide an appropriate amount of time for clinics to contact their patients, and for patients to decide what they wish to do with their gametes or embryos in storage.

Health Care and Adult Social Care

Lord Bethell Excerpts

Wednesday 27th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her reference to the £162.5 million of funding for social care through the workforce retention and recruitment fund to help boost staff numbers and support existing care workers through the winter. This is on top of the third infection control and testing fund, introduced in October 2021, which is providing a further £388.3 million of adult social care Covid-19 support until March 2022. This means that, during the pandemic, we have made available more than £2.5 billion in funding specifically for adult social care. We are also taking action to support adult social care providers through a national recruitment campaign.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, this important report is challenging reading for all those who worked on the front line of the pandemic. Its most challenging section is undoubtedly the part on the recovery of services; in particular, as the noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, said, the importance of

“investment in workforce development and formal changes in service specifications.”

Can the Minister give us some more precise details on how that budget will be spent?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for his question and for the advice he has given me to date. Even though I have size 11 feet, I am finding it rather difficult to fill his large shoes. On the funding announced, local authorities have a key role in supporting recruitment and retention in their local areas. We are working with them to make sure that they support local providers by identifying workforce shortages, developing workforce plans and encouraging joined-up services. We also continue to work closely with providers, councils and our partners to assess the situation and consider what further action may be necessary.