Health and Social Care Bill

Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 11th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Clement-Jones]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow that superb speech by the noble Lord, Lord Darzi, and I agree with almost every word he said.

First, I declare an interest as a member of the College of Medicine advisory board and as chair of the council of the School of Pharmacy. What the noble Lord, Lord Darzi, has said reinforces my view that this is a classic “I would not have started from here” situation. After all the major structural changes under the last Government, I am more than ever convinced that constant structural change is damaging to the NHS. I believe that reforms designed to achieve changes of culture more than complex changes in structure are far more effective in the long run at meeting challenges.

With much improved treatments and longer lifespans, coping with long-term conditions in health and social care is now the greatest challenge for the NHS. As a result, we need a health system that is capable of meeting huge challenges such as diabetes and obesity. As the Future Forum says, we need a reassessment of the “old model” of hospital care, where domiciliary and community care are available and adequately resourced. Patients must be able to take more responsibility for their own health. They must have more power and choice in the system, both as citizens and consumers. There must be much better integration of health and social care.

The current NHS is by no means perfectly adapted to tackling these future health needs. This is compounded by a financial context in which we need to meet the Nicholson challenge of productivity savings of £20 billion over the next five years in order to be able to meet future patient needs. However, this has been poorly communicated. We need transparency about how and why money is being saved in the NHS. At present, to many in the health service, it looks as though cuts are being made rather than resources being redeployed.

However, let me be clear: I welcome many of the elements in the Bill, particularly the improvements conceded after the Future Forum report. I congratulate Professor Field and his colleagues on their work. I welcome the recognition that the paramount duty of Monitor as health regulator must be,

“to protect and promote the interests of people who use health care services”,

and that where appropriate Monitor must exercise its functions in an integrated way to achieve this both within the NHS and between health and social care.

On these Benches we have long supported devolving power to local communities. I welcome the fact that through health and well-being boards, health and social care will be brought together in local communities and local authorities will take on new responsibilities for securing and improving public health. I also welcome a less aggressive timetable for the reforms and commissioning closer to the clinicians.

Therefore, I believe that the Bill is heading in broadly the right direction but there are several elements that I hope to see examined very carefully during its passage. Are the new structures too cumbersome and complex? Will the CCGs and clusters have sufficient weight and expertise when commissioning from foundation trusts? How will CCGs work together in commissioning for less common conditions?

In particular, I want to probe the role that community pharmacists can play in these new NHS structures. There is absolutely no doubt about the contribution that community pharmacies can make. However, there is much untapped potential and many underused facilities, despite pharmacies gearing up to deliver enhanced services such as screening, health checks and medicines management. What will their place be within the new health and well-being boards? What representation of and consultation with community pharmacy will there be throughout the new commissioning system, at NCB and CCG level? Should there be a duty on these commissioning groups to consult widely as there is currently with PCTs? My noble friend the Minister recently told the Royal Pharmaceutical Society that pharmacists will be “at the heart of the new commissioning arrangements”—in what way?

There is the future place of the health networks, in particular their funding for cancer, cardiac and diabetes. Do they have a long-term future? Then there is the fraught area of competition. Generally I support the ambition of commissioning any qualified provider in appropriate areas subject to a system of local and national tariffs. Under the previous Government, procurement by PCTs from the private and voluntary sector was encouraged in a number of areas such as podiatry, psychological therapies and wheelchair services. The right sort of competition between providers can drive improvements in quality and efficiency and hence patient care and choice. However, this is definitely not the case in all services and the challenge is ensuring that this can happen in selected areas without opening up the NHS to legal action in a way that lets European competition law rip and dismantles the fundamentals of the health service as we know it.

European competition law could bite in unexpected ways. The application of competition law to the NHS under existing law has been a grey area for some years. It is not a new issue but we should not do anything to exacerbate it. It is crucial that for the purposes of EU law applied by the Competition Act and the Enterprise Act, publicly funded trusts are not regarded as “undertakings”, otherwise the full rigour of competition law will apply. The limited European case law seems to indicate that it will not if services are provided on a universal basis on the principle of solidarity.

Therefore, I welcome some of the changes that have already been made to Monitor’s duties, mentioned earlier. However, there are other aspects that I and others believe, and are advised, are less positive and will lead to the risks that I have described: the lifting of the cap on foundation trusts’ private patient income, which could set foundation trusts directly in unfettered commercial competition with the private sector and risk claims of cross-subsidisation; and the termination of foundation trust regulation in 2016. I also have my doubts about whether putting the Principles and Rules of Co-operation and Competition on a statutory footing will be a step in the right direction since this could amount to an admission that the full rigour of competition law is to apply. We need to examine all these matters in depth as the Bill progresses.

Finally, of course, we have the issue that has attracted the greatest attention in recent weeks. The Constitution Committee asked whether the change in the Secretary of State’s duties and powers under the Bill threatens the operation of a comprehensive health service. I do not believe in substance that it does but we will want to consider this extremely carefully during the passage of the Bill and in particular the autonomy provisions.

The House has yet to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Owen, but I am convinced that we absolutely do not need a Select Committee to examine this matter. A Committee of this House sitting in this Chamber is perfectly competent and capable of examining this issue with great care. On that basis, tomorrow I shall be firmly voting against the proposition put forward the noble Lord, Lord Owen.