Health and Care Bill

Lord Kamall Excerpts

Committee stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Tuesday 11th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, in the absence of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, I take it upon myself to echo the trenchant observations of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. What do the Government think Parliament is? What do they think it is for? Again and again, we have these Bills—skeleton Bills, Christmas tree Bills, call them what you like, but one thing is abundantly plain: Henry VIII is sitting firmly on his throne issuing his diktats.

This is no way for a democratic Government to treat Parliament, especially the elected House. However, if the elected House will not fully protect itself, we have a duty to speak up for it. There are many who, because of the circumstance of their election recently in Parliament, perhaps feel a bit diffident, but we have a duty not to be diffident. We in this House have a duty to say, “This is no way to treat Parliament”, because we are in effect creating executive departments with dictatorial powers. That is inimical to a parliamentary democracy. It is plain wrong. I do not know how often I shall intervene in the debate on this Bill, but what I do know is that I do not like what I see.

I have enormous and genuine respect for my noble friend the Minister. He has already, very rightly, earned himself a reputation in this House as somebody who is anxious to learn about parliamentary customs and practices, and to listen and reflect. I beg him, as I look at him now, to please talk to his colleagues in the other place who have greater power within the department and say to them that there is real concern in this House—I am delighted to see my noble friend Lady Cumberlege nodding at this point—which has within it many medical experts, such as my noble friend Lord Ribeiro, the noble Lord, Lord Winston, who does not seem to be here this afternoon, my noble friend Lord Kakkar and many others who know about medicine and how things should be organised and who do not see it as their prime purpose to help a Secretary of State hang his baubles on the Christmas tree.

We have a chance—we have done it before in other Bills—to try to improve on this skeleton, this Christmas tree, and to put Henry VIII back in his box, which is where he should be put. I hope that as this Bill goes through your Lordships’ House it will be probed, scrutinised and improved.

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

I start by thanking the noble Baroness, and indeed all noble Lords who have spoken thus far. I will make a general point in response to my noble friend Lord Cormack. I recognise that I am relatively new to this House and that I have much to learn. I hope to learn much, not only from noble Lords who have more experience of the procedures of this House and of holding the Government to account but from many noble Lords from across the House with medical expertise and management expertise in the health and social care sector.

I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, for bringing this debate before the Committee. Amendment 1 would mean that we could not commence the change of legal name from the National Commissioning Board to NHS England until after an impact assessment for each of the clauses in Part 1 of the Bill is published, while Amendment 315 would mean that we could not commence Part 1 until after the publication of an impact assessment for each clause’s impact on the risks, costs and benefits to patients.

I hope I can reassure the noble Baroness that my department has published the impact assessments. She acknowledged this and I accept that they were not published in the most timely way. I will endeavour to do my best to make sure that we publish these assessments with as much notice as possible. They are available for noble Lords to review on GOV.UK. I am very happy for the noble Baroness to take credit for the first impact assessment. We will endeavour to do better. We will also commit to publishing further impact assessments for secondary legislation made under the powers contained in the Bill, where those regulations will have significant impact on the health and care system or private businesses, to provide transparency and clarity to the system.

The amendment would also delay the commencement of Part 1 until at least six months after commencement regulations were laid before your Lordships’ House. This would delay the implementation of the key provisions contained in Part 1.

The NHS put forward its recommendations for legislation in 2019. It is preparing, subject to parliamentary passage, to implement the ICB provisions of the Bill from July 2022. We know that ICBs in effect exist in many areas, in whatever form of development, and it is essential that we put these on a statutory footing as soon as possible. The development of ICBs builds on years of development work in local systems to improve partnership working. Delaying the implementation risks a loss of momentum in establishing statutory integrated care boards and the benefits that they are intended to deliver. For these reasons, I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for that very gracious answer and start to our deliberations. I also thank in particular the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and the noble Lord, Lord Cormack. I really was rather hoping that the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, would come in, as this is absolutely what he knows about. He is quite right. I hope that noble Lords who are experts in this will look carefully at the Bill and at the two reports I referred to, because they will need to guide us in our deliberations over the next few weeks.

Let us see what the impact assessment says—whether it works or not—and see whether we need to review certain parts of the Bill with a view to looking at the Constitution Committee’s report, for example, which also was published only yesterday. With that, and with the warning that this is the beginning and not the end of the discussion, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

My Lords, I feel that today’s debate on this important group of amendments should carry much weight because, at its core, this is about treating people as whole people and seeing them as physical, mental and social beings. Our welfare on each of those fronts is absolutely key to the others. It is not possible simply to treat one without regard to the others, and it is crucial that we enhance people’s well-being across our whole complexity as human beings.

I am glad to speak to this group of amendments because, as we have heard across all sides of the Committee throughout today’s debate, the reality is that, despite the best efforts encapsulated in the mandate, and many times in policy, we find that competing priorities, an avalanche of guidance and instructions, and events—the pandemic has been referred to several times, of course—mean that mental health services can be, and indeed have been, relatively left behind. As the Centre for Mental Health reports:

“Mental health problems account for 28% of the burden of disease but only 13% of NHS spending.”


In the debate today we have also asked ourselves: where is the accountability? For example, we know that in many clinical commissioning groups the actual spend on mental health was below what it was supposed to be, yet there have been no consequences. We need to address not just the finances but the mechanisms around it and the impact on individuals.

The founding National Health Service Act 1946 rightly spoke of a comprehensive health service that secured the improvement of both physical and mental health, and subsequent Acts, quite rightly, have confirmed this. In operational terms, the Government require NHS England to work for parity of esteem for mental and physical health through this NHS mandate, but we know, and have heard again today, that this requirement falls down when we go to a local level.

One way or another, we will all be familiar with a whole range of stories of people who have not been able to access treatment in a timely manner or who find that they are pushed around a system with very little effect and discharged from care before it is appropriate, with consequences that are all too clear to see. It is difficult to overestimate just how challenging this is, not just for the individuals but for local commissioners, because they face competing pressures in trying to deal with this.

As has been emphasised, this group of amendments is about not just getting on the road to financial parity, important though that is, but changing the culture and the whole means of monitoring and implementation, so that disparities can be addressed—indeed, if possible, so that difficulties can be headed off at the pass. It is a well-worn phrase, but it sometimes seems that mental health is a Cinderella service—the one that can be cut first, to the benefit of the more visible services. Some of the recent statistics show that one in four mental health beds has been cut in the last decade, while just last year 37% of children referred by a professional to mental health services were turned away. That is a shocking statistic that we need to move away from.

I thank noble Lords for promoting these amendments and for their contributions illustrating what they mean and the reason we need them today. The noble Lords, Lord Stevens and Lord Patel, made timely points about the impact of the pandemic. If this is not a moment for focusing more on mental health, I do not know what is. The challenge we have and the difficulty presented by the pandemic is that while there is a focus on cutting waits for operations—and we know that is important—this could be a reason for mental health services to get somewhat lost, when in fact the pandemic reminds us of the importance of mental health and the need for the NHS to meet the needs that there now are.

The amendment by the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, encourages and directs the actions necessary for transparency on expenditure. I recall that they were referred to in the debate as legislative levers, and that is indeed what they can be. For me, they encourage not just accountability and transparency but actual action and change—the change we need to see.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, referred to parity of esteem having to be applied locally, not just at a higher level. That is the only way we will see a difference in mental health services and improve the mental health of people in this country.

The noble Lord, Lord Crisp, made reference to the fact that legislation is trying to catch up with where we are as a society, and the noble Lord, Lord Warner, referring back to the meeting he attended, said that the public are well ahead of the game. I believe that is true. Indeed, as the noble Baroness, Lady Watkins, said, we have to prepare for tomorrow. It is not satisfactory that we stay stuck in today, or indeed in the past.

In my view, these amendments move us on. They bring mental health services into real parity with physical health services, but they also connect mental and physical together. I hope they will find favour from the Minister.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I begin by thanking all your Lordships for the wide-ranging debate. I want to say how much more I learn, listening to the contributions in each of these debates, before I stand up to speak. I thank all noble Lords for their contributions. As the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, says, this debate carries some weight for our understanding that social, mental and physical well-being are equally important. We should not seek to suggest that one takes precedence over another. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, for kicking off this debate with his encouraging and not critical amendments; I take them in that spirit.

Following on from that, and before I go to some of the specific amendments, I will just reflect on some of the contributions made thus far. I first thank the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, for raising social prescribing. I know we have discussed this a number of times since I became the Minister, with particular contributions from the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, on the importance of art and music in helping to unlock the mind and touch the soul.

As has been made clear, social prescribing is a key component of the NHS’s universal personalised care, and I know that, crucially, this can work well for those who are socially isolated or whose well-being is impacted by non-medical issues. The NHS has mechanisms to ensure that social prescribing is embedded across England: for example, the primary care network directed at enhanced services specification outlines that all PCNs must provide access to a social prescribing service.

I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Patel, for raising the importance of the mental health of children and for making sure that we do not forget, even within mental health, that many sections of our society can quite easily be forgotten.

I agree with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London: we have come a long way. I remember as a child in the 1970s going to visit my uncle who was a psychiatric nurse at Claybury Hospital and looking at the patients, with the innocence of a child, and thinking, “These people don’t look ill to me.” We have come far since then. I remember the Rampton hospital scandal in the late 1970s, where the patients were treated appallingly, almost not as humans, and with a lack of dignity. The fact that today we are discussing the parity of mental with physical health shows how far we have come as a society.

We also spoke about loneliness and isolation. The noble Baroness, Lady Watkins, and I have had conversations about loneliness and some of the civil society projects that, for example, bring together lonely older people with children from broken homes so that both can benefit and learn from each other. I remember a story that I have mentioned in the past: in one of the projects I visited, a rather old man said, “I lost my wife five years ago and I had almost given up on life. The fact that I am now working with children from broken families and am almost being a mentor to them gives me a purpose to live—a reason to get up in the morning. I have no longer given up on life.” There are so many of these civil society projects, and no matter how we legislate, sometimes those local projects get to the nub of the problem in their local communities.

I have to pay attention when not only two former NHS chief executive officers but the former Chief Nursing Officer speak in the debate. The noble Lord, Lord Crisp, talked about the focus on outcomes, not inputs and how it is important to make sure that we are not gaming the system, mentioning mental illness and mental health but not doing anything effective about it.

Autism was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Warner, a former Health Minister. We are fully committed to improving access to and provision of health and care services for autistic people and people with a learning disability. I know that we have had at least one debate on the treatment of patients with autism and sometimes the terrible conditions they experience. That just shows how important this is.

I am trying to say that in many ways that the Government are absolutely committed to supporting everyone’s mental health and well-being and to ensuring that the right support is in place for all who need it. I therefore welcome the amendments which look to ensure parity of esteem across physical and mental health. I assure noble Lords that we support the sentiments behind these amendments and take mental health seriously.

Indeed, one of the considerations in weighing up the many arguments for further measures in response to Covid—from those who were asking for lockdown, for example—is that we also had to recognise that there was a mental health impact to lockdown. As a Government, we had to look not only at the societal and economic impacts but the mental health impacts within health considerations.

On the amendments, I will first address those tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins—I add my voice to those of the many noble Lords who have paid tribute to her work over many years in promoting this issue and ensuring that we take it seriously. I also pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, for making sure that we are informed about this. These amendments would explicitly reference both mental and physical health and illness in certain provisions of the Bill. I understand that the intention is to ensure that due attention is given to both “mental and physical health” and “mental and physical illness”. Indeed, you cannot separate mental and physical illness, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, said. We have moved way beyond “Pull yourself together, man” or a stiff upper lip attitude. We see how mental health plays a role, for example, in terrorism, with those who are recruited to be terrorists, or in those with eating disorders, or the number of people in prison who suffer from mental health issues. It is important that we fully recognise that.