Major Trauma Centre: Westminster

Lord Jordan Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford]

My noble friend raises an important point. Ambulance and specialist response teams have very tried-and-tested ways of working with the fire and rescue and police services to make sure that they preserve life during potential terrorist attacks. We can be very confident in that response, especially given their performance during recent events.

[Lord Jordan (Lab)]

My Lords, London has some of the finest emergency services and best-equipped trauma centres in the world. The real problem is the deadly vacuum between the terrorist attack and the arrival of paramedics. Specialist and military experts have developed citizenAID, a free app with a proven record that gives ordinary people the ability to give life-saving first aid without prior training or equipment. Will the Government promote citizenAID nationally? London needs it now, as does the Parliamentary Estate.

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford]

The noble Lord makes a very sensible suggestion to look at ways in which we can encourage individuals to save lives. It may be appropriate in situations other than terrorist attacks and I am happy to look into it.

Public Health: Strength and Balance Programme

Lord Jordan Excerpts

Thursday 18th January 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Jordan]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they intend to provide local authorities with sufficient resources to enable them to provide universal access to the Strength and Balance Programme for adults over 65.

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

My Lords, we are providing £16 billion to local authorities to spend on public health during the course of this Parliament. It is for local authorities to determine their spending priorities, reflecting the needs of their populations. The Chief Medical Officer recommends that adults undertake strength and balance activities on at least two days a week. Most local authorities provide opportunities for these activities within their falls prevention programmes.

[Lord Jordan (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for his reply and declare an interest as deputy president of ROSPA. Will the Minister acknowledge that it is the failure to tackle adequately the chronic causes that means a quarter of a million elderly people attend accident and emergency each year with fall-related injuries, which makes an NHS crisis inevitable when seasonal illness strikes the same social group? To ease the unacceptable burden on A&E departments, will he urge the Government to give more tangible support to local authorities and to age-related and safety organisations whose work with elderly people, through what they call strength and balance exercise-based programmes, can and does significantly reduce the risk of injuries to those taking part?

[Lord O’Shaughnessy]

The noble Lord is quite right to point out the importance of preventing falls. Around 95% of hip fractures come about through falls, at particular cost and pain to the individual, of course, but also to the wider economy as a whole. I should point out that Public Health England supports a number of activities, one of which is a partnership with Sport England that has trained 5,000 health professionals in delivering physical activities, including strength and balance work. I agree that more needs to be done at local authority level, particularly as we have an ageing population, but there is good work going on at the local level.

Health and Social Care: Falls Prevention

Lord Jordan Excerpts

Thursday 30th November 2017 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Jordan]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the value of every local authority adopting a strategic approach to falls prevention in the context of easing the burden on the health and social care systems.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Lord O'Shaughnessy) (Con)]

My Lords, in July 2016 Public Health England established the national falls prevention co-ordination group. It has recommended that local authorities and clinical commissioning groups agree a falls and fracture prevention strategy and identify a commissioning lead with a remit for falls, bone health, multi-morbidity and frailty.

[Lord Jordan (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply and declare an interest as vice-president of RoSPA. Will he acknowledge that injuries and deaths resulting from falls have reached alarming levels, especially among the elderly? There are more than a quarter of a million emergency hospital admissions in England every year as a result of falls by people aged over 65. More than 70,000 of these are hip fractures, which are the leading cause of accident-related deaths of older people in the UK each year. The annual cost of hip fractures alone, including medical and social care, is estimated to be more than £2 billion. Will the Government commit to easing this huge burden on health and social care services by supporting and funding local authorities for falls prevention work?

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

The noble Lord is quite right to highlight this important issue. The statistics are quite alarming, as he has pointed out. Every year, about one in three over 65 year-olds will experience a fall, and that rises to one in two for those aged over 80. This is a very significant problem with a very obvious human cost, as well as the economic cost that he described. The main area we need to work on is obviously prevention. I point him to the increased funding going into the disabled facilities grant, which has doubled over the last few years and is continuing to grow. That is about preventing falls in the home, which is where most falls take place. The consequences of doing that are huge. It means fewer hospital admissions, people can stay in their homes for longer, and reduced harm to patients.

Older Persons: Human Rights and Care

Lord Jordan Excerpts

Thursday 16th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jordan (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Foulkes for bringing forward this important subject. I will take a practical look at what I see as a highly complex issue. My noble friend tells us that those aged 65 and over are expected to number 16 million by 2030. When we consider the current impact on the health and social care system of the ageing population, with two-fifths of national health spending devoted to people over 65, we see that the implications for the NHS of the growth trend in those over 65 are quite staggering. The potential effects on tomorrow’s health services will be of crisis proportions unless today’s problems are tackled intelligently.

It is certainly encouraging that the UN and the Council of Europe have recognised the issue and the rights of older people. There is tremendous value in international charters and conventions that set out necessary human rights. I, along with others, have campaigned for many of them. But that is where the real work begins, for how many countries have signed such agreements, only to pay lip service to what they regard as international wish lists? Climate change is a good example.

I remember meeting Dr Manmohan Singh when he was the Finance Minister—later to become Prime Minister—of India and trying to convince him that a social clause was needed in world trade agreements. He said that he was convinced personally but that India and other developing nations did not believe that a social clause served their economic interests. He was a truly honourable man, but the economic interests of India came first. I tell the story because I believe that it is at the heart of what we are debating. We have to show our Government and every other Government that finding solutions to the problems of older people will be one of the most economically rewarding tasks they will ever embark on. I believe we can and I believe we must.

My long association with the manufacturing industry, together with a more recent period as president—and now vice-president—of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, has taken me on a more pragmatic path to progress this issue. The particular issue I would concentrate on is what I think older people see as their main priority: health. I have seen the remarkable results that can be achieved where prevention has been the driving force. Since the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 was introduced, and prevention became less economically painful to employers than paying for damaged lives, we have seen an 85% reduction in workplace fatalities and a similarly impressive reduction in injuries, thus lifting a significant and needless financial burden from the NHS. RoSPA, with others, successfully campaigned for the introduction of seat belts in cars; the law was passed in 1989. Since that time, the number of vehicles has risen by more than one-third, but there has been a 66% fall in road fatalities. This preventive approach should be taken with some of the more serious problems that older people face.

Take the biggest preventable problem faced by older people: accidents. There are more than 250,000 fall-related emergency hospital admissions every year for serious injuries involving over-65s in England alone. Where there has been a targeted and collaborative approach, such as the one that took place in the West Midlands involving the Government, RoSPA and the local authority, aimed at preventing this type of accident among older people, significant results have been achieved—in this case, a 38% reduction in the number of over-65s attending A&E as a result of a fall.

Neither we nor the Government can solve all of the many and serious problems that older people face, but the Government must understand that acting to prevent the problems of the old is infinitely more cost effective than throwing money at their consequences. They should know also that there is an army of organisations and charities eager to partner them in a common objective of tackling the problems that older people face. I call on the Government to seize the opportunity that has been presented to them to deal with this, one of Britain’s most serious problems.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Jordan Excerpts

Thursday 29th June 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jordan (Lab)]

My Lords, the gracious Speech was, understandably, dominated by Brexit matters. Disappointingly, little was said about how the Government plan to deal with the persistent and dangerous pressures that face the NHS. I therefore urge the Government to look seriously at the issue of accident prevention as a priority, because by doing so they will significantly improve the prospect of easing the waiting times within the health service and the pressure on those who work in it.

I declare an interest as immediate past president of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, which this year celebrates its centenary—100 years of leading campaigns for accident prevention.

But while there has been significant progress in reducing injury and ill health on the road and in the workplace, the world of health and safety is now dealing with a new and worrying trend. Accidents to people in their own homes and at leisure are on the increase, particularly for the most vulnerable in society—the very young, the very old and the poor. In the United Kingdom, accidents are the biggest killer of children and young people up to the age of 19. Taking just the under-fives in isolation, at least one child is killed in an accident every week, with more than 75% of those accidents happening in the home.

Additionally, each year at least half of the under-fives who attend A&E have an unintentional injury that could quite easily and cheaply have been avoided. Of these, 100 visit hospital every week because of poisoning, while 60 are hospitalised each week with burns or scalds. Those are shocking statistics, and yet ways of tackling the problem exist. Fewer than one-third of parents think that they are getting enough advice and information on how to protect their children from accidents. RoSPA’s Brighter Beginnings appeal aims to provide new parents with free advice, information and equipment to help keep their kids safe.

At the other end of the age spectrum, even more stark accidental injury and death figures show that, in 2014-15, falls accounted for 282,000 hospital admissions among the over-65s in England, and that there are more than 70,000 hip fractures each year. Remember, many of those who suffer a fall in old age, even after going through the NHS, still end up requiring expensive care. Yet falls are not an inevitable part of ageing. RoSPA is leading on an initiative, funded by the Department of Health’s innovation, excellence and strategic development fund, called Stand Up, Stay Up, which tackles exactly this problem. This project will not only reduce injuries and levels of attendance at hospital, but contribute to the Government’s social care objectives referred to in the gracious Speech.

These are some of the programmes of preventative intervention that could save the NHS millions of pounds each year and allow pressured health professionals to focus attention on others with even greater medical need. But to deliver their full potential, these kinds of programmes need wider promotion and investment by the Government to allow them to be rolled out across the country and sustained over a long period of time. Can the Minister tell us what further plans the Government have to invest in these types of programmes?

Concerning the tragedy at Grenfell Tower, I bring to the House’s attention a recent open letter addressed to the Prime Minister, written in response to the disaster and signed by more than 700 safety professionals. They included RoSPA, the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health, and the British Safety Council. In it, they call for an end to arbitrary rules on the deregulation of health and safety. The letter states that:

“Good, well-evidenced and proportionate regulations in health and safety, based on full consultation, are developed and adopted because they save lives and protect people’s health and wellbeing. They are not ‘burdens on business’ but provide essential protection for the public from identifiable risks”.


I urge the Government to listen to and act on this well-intentioned and well-informed advice.

Accident and Emergency Departments

Lord Jordan Excerpts

Monday 30th November 2015 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Jordan]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they plan to take in the light of the investigation by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents and the Royal College of Emergency Medicine into the part that accident prevention could play in relieving pressure on accident and emergency departments.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Lord Prior of Brampton) (Con)]

The Government welcome the investigation’s contribution to informing activity on public health and highlighting the part that accident prevention can play in relieving the pressure on accident and emergency departments. It is for local authorities with their local partners to consider the best actions to take to prevent accidents as part of their responsibilities for improving the health and well-being of their local communities.

[Lord Jordan (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for his reply and declare an interest as vice-president of RoSPA. At a time when A&E departments are facing mounting pressure, the RoSPA and Royal College of Emergency Medicine report shows that accidents to children represent a disproportionate number of the injuries that A&Es treat. It also shows that 72% of injuries to children under five occur at home, and that head injuries are among the most common and most serious. Will the Minister urge the Government to back the report’s analysis and its credible proposal to invest in proven techniques that would help to reduce some of the unacceptable pressure on A&Es and the spiralling costs of the NHS and, most importantly, make a significant contribution to reducing the pain, suffering and deaths caused to children by the failure to address this problem?

Accidents: Costs

Lord Jordan Excerpts

Monday 31st October 2011 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Jordan]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what measures they are taking to reduce the cost to United Kingdom society of home and leisure accidents.

[Lord Jordan]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. In doing so, I declare an interest as president of RoSPA.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe)]

My Lords, the Government are taking steps to improve the health of the population through reforms to the health and social care systems, and cross-government policies that support health and safety. These will contribute to reducing the costs to society of accidents, including those caused in the home and through leisure activities.

[Lord Jordan]

I thank the noble Earl for his reply. Will he acknowledge that in contrast to other priorities in public health, accident prevention is the only topic that still does not have a lead body? Does he accept that that is a massive gap, considering that accident prevention and home and leisure accidents cost the National Health Service £5 billion a year? Will he give an assurance that the Government will treat this as a matter of urgency by directing Public Health England to a programme of national strategic accident prevention as a mandatory feature in all local public health plans?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Lord’s work as president of RoSPA and, indeed, to the work of RoSPA itself. He may recall that the public health White Paper that we issued some months ago—Healthy Lives, Healthy People—as well as the update that we issued, specifically lists accident prevention as one of the key areas of responsibility. That to my mind is par excellence an area where local authorities will be able to make a difference with their new public health responsibilities under the Health and Social Care Bill. They will be able to work with organisations like RoSPA and professional groups such as health visitors to improve safety in their areas. We look forward to working with them on those programmes, should they choose to prioritise them.