St George’s Hospital: Patient Deaths

Debate between Lord Kakkar and Lord Kamall

Wednesday 18th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

The noble Baroness raises a very important question, and it was one of the questions I asked when I was being briefed on this. Unfortunately, when HSIB was established, it did not investigate to historical cases. The future HSSIB will also not be able to investigate such cases; it will undertake only cases that are brought to it in the future.

[Lord Kakkar (CB)]

My Lords, I draw noble Lords’ attention to my registered interests. The Minister rightly identifies that the NHS, and indeed all healthcare systems, must be committed to ensuring the best clinical outcomes and securing patient safety. Clinical failings are subjected currently to a number of different potential investigations, such as local employer investigation, professional regulatory investigation, systems regulator investigation, civil litigation and potential criminal prosecution and interrogation. How do Her Majesty’s Government ensure that these multiple routes for investigating a clinical failing are properly co-ordinated to ensure that immediate learnings from such failings are applied to drive system improvement?

NHS Mental Health Patients in Private Hospitals

Debate between Lord Kakkar and Lord Kamall

Thursday 28th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

The noble Lord clearly discusses an important point: we have to have the appropriate workforce. The Government have begun a register of social care to work out who is in the workforce, what qualifications they have and what improvements we have to make to social care. We should also remember that social care providers are a mixture of private homes and state provision. At the same time, we have to make sure that we have the right people, locally trained. For example, the visa system encourages people to come and work in our social care system as well.

[Lord Kakkar (CB)]

My Lords, I draw noble Lords’ attention to my declared interests. In view of recent press reports about a young patient who absconded from a private sector mental health unit and subsequently died, and the subsequent coroner’s inquest findings, is the Minister able to confirm that the Department of Health and Social Care will be able to provide guidance on the safety and security arrangements that should attend outside areas at mental health units and subsequently might be used as the basis for CQC inspection?

Elective Care Recovery

Debate between Lord Kakkar and Lord Kamall

Monday 7th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

The noble Lord rightly raises the issue of our brilliant workforce, who are at the heart of our plans for recovering services. The NHS’s delivery plans are focused on how we can transform these services and do things differently, not just asking staff to do more of the same. The monthly workforce statistics for November 2021 show that a record number of staff are working in the NHS, with over 1.2 million full-time-equivalent staff, which is over 1.3 million in headcount. This includes record numbers of doctors and nurses. In addition, we are recruiting new staff and focusing on different recruitment programmes and on retention, which many noble Lords have raised. We want to make sure that the excellent staff in our health system are happy and kept happy.

[Lord Kakkar (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as chairman of King’s Health Partners. The Minister rightly identified that an important proportion of this increased waiting list is those requiring elective surgical intervention. How does he propose that the additional capacity will be created to address this important demand, beyond the question on an appropriate workforce just raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, as well as infrastructure and, beyond that, the development of novel models of care that ensure that elective surgery can be delivered safely and to a high standard?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

We hope that the funding will deliver around 9 million more checks, scans and procedures, and we hope to support our aim for the NHS to deliver around 30% more elective activity by 2024-25, compared to pre-pandemic levels. As part of that, we have allocated £2.3 billion to increase the volume of diagnostic activity, and we are rolling out at least 100 further community diagnostic centres by 2024-25 to help with the backlogs of people waiting for clinical tests such as MRIs, ultrasounds and CT scans. These increases will allow the NHS to carry out 4.5 million additional scans by 2024-25, increasing capacity and enabling earlier diagnosis.

Medical Schools: Training Places

Debate between Lord Kakkar and Lord Kamall

Monday 13th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

When training doctors from abroad, we follow international guidelines and World Health Organization ethical guidelines. For example, when I recently had a meeting with the Kenyan ministry to talk about the UK-Kenya health partnership, the point was made to me that they were training far more people than they had places for in their own country. They thought that their talent was a valuable export, while at the same time, remittances went back to their country.

[Lord Kakkar (CB)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my registered interests. Does the Minister accept that long-term workforce planning requires an effective apparatus that is able to understand the changing population demographic, changes in the nature of the delivery of healthcare and how technology and innovation might impact that? Do Her Majesty’s Government have a view about establishing such an apparatus as part of the current Health and Care Bill before your Lordships’ House?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

There has rightly been much discussion of workforce planning for the NHS and adult social care, and the Bill will build on this. Clause 35 will bring greater clarity and accountability in this area, requiring the Secretary of State and the NHS to produce a workforce plan.

Covid-19 Update

Debate between Lord Kakkar and Lord Kamall

Wednesday 8th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for making those two important points. As we know from what happened previously, as a consequence of lockdown, many people were unable to have operations or even diagnoses. In fact, much of the waiting list—80%—is for diagnosis. It is too early to tell what the impact will be, but I will find out and write to her. It is quite clear that there will be a negative economic impact. I do not think one has to be the former head of research for an economic think tank to say that, but it depends on how long this lasts and what economic activity continues in the meantime. I will look at that.

[Lord Kakkar (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister rightly made the point that two variants will shortly be circulating in high volume—the delta and omicron variants. Is he content that there is sufficient genomic sequencing capacity to distinguish between the two and, therefore, understand the epidemiology and the natural history of the two competing virus strains, at a basic level?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I attended a meeting this afternoon with leading epidemiologists, showing the data and separating the omicron variant, the delta variant and the original coronavirus. They have the data, and one of the reasons we have made this announcement is because we are able to distinguish between them. We are constantly reviewing the data for the original coronavirus and the variants but, if the noble Lord has any more scientific or medical questions, he should let me know or attend the briefing with Jenny Harries on Friday.

NHS: Elective and Cancer Care Backlog

Debate between Lord Kakkar and Lord Kamall

Tuesday 7th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

Even before the pandemic there was a growing number of referrals across elective and cancer care. This had been driven by a number of different factors, including people’s awareness of cancer, the symptoms associated with it and media campaigns. In addition, one of successes of having an ageing population is that people face a number of different issues. For example, over half of cancers are diagnosed in patients over 65. We know that we have to tackle this issue. That is why we have published the long-term plan with a £33.9 billion budget.

[Lord Kakkar (CB)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my registered interests. Is the Minister content that the NHS has a workforce strategy sufficiently robust to ensure that the extra funds provided can be effectively deployed?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

In June 2019 the NHS published a people plan that would improve the NHS workforce, including a dedication to recruit more nurses. We continue to work hard to deliver that commitment. Latest workforce figures show that there are 5,100 more doctors and more than 9,700 more nurses.