Queen’s Speech

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I have to say that the Conservative Party did not do so well in Birmingham.

It is a great pleasure to declare my interests as a member of the GMC, a trustee of the Royal College of Ophthalmologists and president of GS1, the barcoding association responsible for the Scan4Safety programme.

I greatly welcome my noble friend Lady Blower. She made a brilliant maiden speech, and debates on education will be very much strengthened by her presence.

I welcome the emphasis in the Queen’s Speech on the NHS but it is the absence of any concrete proposals on social care that causes most concern. Frankly, the search for cross-party consensus seems to be no more than a promise to put it once more into the long grass. A number of my noble friends have talked about this. I urge the Government to go back to Dilnot. They commissioned Dilnot. He produced an excellent report, which was acclaimed. We legislated for it in this House. It is on the statute book. If we were to combine Dilnot with a more generous means test and more resources to local authorities to fund adult social care, it would not be perfect but, my goodness, it would be an improvement on the current iniquitous system.

I also welcome the return of the health service safety investigations Bill. It will be eagerly anticipated. Of course, it calls into question the Government’s patient safety strategy as a whole. I express my concern to the Minister that the strategy published just a few months ago claimed that the past 20 years have seen great progress in patient safety but no evidence was given. Talking to people on the ground—doctors and nurses—they are concerned that patient safety is compromised every day because of the huge pressures on the system. I was struck by the note sent out by the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital just before Christmas, which told staff to make the “least unsafe decision” following a huge rise in admissions. Every day, up and down the country, NHS staff are having to make unpalatable decisions about priorities and about how to deal with the pressures and patient safety is clearly being brought into question.

I very much agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, when he talked about financial regulation. I believe the same sentiment should apply to medicines and medical devices regulation. We are promised a Bill, but the key question is whether regulation in the UK will continue to be aligned with the EU. We have had great advantages from that. Many overseas companies have invested in the UK, partly because of our life science sector and partly because regulation—either licensing or receiving a device’s charter mark—has meant that they could go into Europe and the licensing would be accepted. Despite the fact that the NHS is a poor adopter of new medicines, devices and innovations, it made the UK an attractive country in which to do business.

The Government say that they no longer want us to be aligned to the EU. What does this mean for medicines and medical devices regulation? Let us say that a US global pharmaceutical company had invested a lot of money in the UK; does it mean that, in future, it can continue to invest in the UK and get a licence from our regulator but would then have to seek a separate licence with different criteria in the rest of the EU? If that is the case, I can tell the Minister that investment will stop. If companies have to come here first, invest in R&D, go through all our regulatory procedures and then have to go to Europe and go through different processes, they will simply not come to the UK any more. This is a very important issue, which I look forward to debating when we get the Bill.

On NHS funding, I simply echo the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London. The 3.4% per annum over five years can do no more than stabilise the current situation. As she said, we are failing lamentably on all the core targets and there are no signs as yet that we will get anywhere near meeting them. I welcome that Bill because we will want to amend it to ensure that the NHS has funding for the long term to meet all the pressures that it needs to face.