Drug-related Mental and Behavioural Disorder Hospital Admissions

Debate between Lord McColl of Dulwich and Baroness Penn

Wednesday 17th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, the Government are committed to putting more funding into both the provision of more affordable housing and more social housing, which will help to address these issues.

[Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con) [V]]

The long-term use of cannabis and high-strength cannabis contribute a great deal to diseases of the mind and the brain. Have their effects been factored into social care and dementia strategies and the long-term NHS plans? Can the Minister elaborate on that?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, one challenge among drug treatment services is an ageing population for certain drug users. I will certainly take my noble friend’s point away and write to him with any further details.

Cross-Government Policy to Strengthen Families

Debate between Lord McColl of Dulwich and Baroness Penn

Wednesday 18th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I, too, endorse the comments made about the late Lord Sacks. What a wonderful man he was. Will the Minister say how the Government plan to help parents whose children’s development has been negatively impacted by the recent closure of nurseries and schools, as evidenced in Ofsted’s national inspection report?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, the key thing has been to keep vulnerable children and young people in school or to get them back to school if they did not go there during the first lockdown. We kept those settings open for children, and the vast majority of children are back, but we are encouraging schools to reach out to parents who have not returned their children and to provide them with reassurance if they have concerns. We have also provided the catch-up fund, worth £1 billion, to include tutoring for disadvantaged pupils and £9 million specifically towards improving the language skills of reception-age children who need the most support.

NHS: GP Vacancies

Debate between Lord McColl of Dulwich and Baroness Penn

Thursday 8th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

One aspect of our response is to increase the number of GPs, but there is also an important role for other healthcare professionals working in primary care. Those numbers increased last year—both the number of nurses working in primary care and the number of other workers, such as physiotherapists and social prescribing link workers. A more diverse workforce and a better mix can free up GP time to focus on those with the highest clinical need.

[Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con) [V]]

My Lords, there are complications in calculating the number of general practitioners, because a large number of them do variable numbers of sessions—some do four, five, six, seven, eight and so on. The size of the general practice workforce is often calculated in terms of whole-time equivalence, but this is unlikely to be accurate because there are GPs who are paid for five or six sessions but do many more. Is this taken into account when calculating these numbers?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

The noble Lord is correct that the numbers are calculated at full-time equivalence. There may be more individual GPs working, because one trend we have seen is that with increased workload, people with families to look after, or who are either at the end or the start of their career, are choosing not to work full-time. With the retention programme, we are looking at both freeing up time and workload pressures on those GPs and providing specific support with childcare and costs to those looking to join or return to general practice.

Medicines and Medical Devices Bill

Debate between Lord McColl of Dulwich and Baroness Penn

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 2nd September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Cumberlege and her committee on producing such a thorough and important report.

I draw attention to a practice that many of us clinicians used for years. It detected clinical problems in treatment, equipment and management early on. We had weekly meetings for an hour or so to discuss any complications that had occurred in the previous week. It was attended by consultants, junior staff, medical students, nurses and a manager or two. It was always an interesting and very instructive meeting, and it brought problems to light early on. People were very honest about their mistakes; it became rather like the general confession. Of course, it was essential to have as a chairman of these meetings somebody who was friendly and encouraged people to adopt the attitude of “There but for the grace of God go I”. It was a very inexpensive and successful kind of quality assurance.

I have a few questions to put to the Minister. First, do the Government plan to mandate the tracking of all medical devices used in the UK and not just those selected at random? Secondly, will the use of medical device registries be extended to patient outcomes? Thirdly, will the Government go ahead and establish the post of a patient safety commissioner, as strongly recommended by my noble friend Lady Cumberlege and many of your Lordships? Some years ago, I used to carry out transplant operations and became very familiar with the problems involved.

I emphasise that in Committee I shall fully support the amendments in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, and the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, dealing with forced organ harvesting. As mentioned before, Sir Geoffrey Nice QC stated in his report that forced organ harvesting has been committed for years throughout China. [Inaudible.]

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

I am afraid that we can no longer hear my noble friend. If he would make his concluding point, that would be wonderful.

[Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con) [V]]

Perhaps those who spend so much time attacking the Government about this and that might like to turn their attacks on the Chinese Government, whose morally corrupt behaviour demonstrates to the world what is going on in China.

Finally, I again congratulate my noble friend on her outstanding report.