Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between Lord Newton of Braintree and Lord Turnberg

Monday 27th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Turnberg]

My Lords, we have heard that integrated care means different things to different people. As far these amendments are concerned—including the one to which my name is attached—the focus is on the integration of hospital care, NHS care and social care. Almost since its inception, the biggest problem for the NHS has been the division between health and social services; the division between funding—which of course drives everything—and management.

Acute services have always been the focus of most NHS funding. One might expect me to say, as a former acute care physician, that that is entirely appropriate. However, it has always been clear that this division, with different funding streams, has led to dreadful miscommunication between two sets of staff working under quite different systems, who fail to talk to each other in anything like a timely manner.

The end result is well rehearsed. Patients who would have been much better cared for at home—or in a nursing home if one were available and if someone could have made a proper assessment—finish up in an acute hospital which is poorly designed to provide the sort of care that they really need. On the other side, patients—usually elderly—are admitted to hospital for entirely appropriate reasons, but linger there well after their acute need has been sorted out. Clearly, if we had common funding of health and social services, we could see people employed across this divide. That is what we need: people with a foot in both camps. I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Mawhinney, that it takes two to tango—it takes both the heath service and local authorities, and they do not tango terribly well. While we do not have common funding, however, at least we can work towards it. Here we have an opportunity to emphasise the duty that should be placed on the NHS, for one, to ensure integration at this level. This is of such importance for patients that we should emphasise it at the least in this relatively minor way here.

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

My Lords, I support—with some trepidation—what my noble friend Lord Mawhinney has said, and I pick up the point about it taking two to tango. I yield to nobody in my support for integrated services. I heard what the noble Baroness, Lady Young—a person with whom I go back a long way—said about diabetes, and I do not disagree with it. I do not disagree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley—with whom I go back even further I think—said, presumably arising from her experience as part of Age Concern. The question is whether this amendment does it, or whether in fact it contains things which will make it more difficult. As the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, said, it takes two to tango. As I read it, every responsibility here is laid on health service bodies, not local authority or social service bodies. If we are to go down this sort of path, we need to lay equal obligations on both.

However, the issue goes beyond that. It should be recognised that one of the most difficult or most needy areas in this field is mental health, which I know something about even though I no longer have a direct interest. With mental health there is a need for co-operation not just between the various statutory authorities—indeed, many mental health trusts are partnership trusts with the local social services department and have made significant progress, as was true of the one with which I was involved until January—but with voluntary organisations. Where are they covered in all this? I had a difficult case in a mental health trust that I chaired 10 or 15 years ago. Nobody in any statutory service, whether local authority or health, had known that the patient in question was undergoing anger management courses paid for privately, and that caused problems. Last weekend, I was talking to someone in Braintree who is interested in the Rethink Mental Illness charity and is trying to build up the local Rethink art therapy classes, for which he thinks he has acquired a building. That, too, ought to be integrated with the services provided by the mainstream.

I do not believe that this amendment, however valuable it is and however worthy its objective, will achieve that objective without a great deal more sophistication. Personally I would rather leave it to the Minister and his department to issue guidance and apply pressure in rather different ways to produce the integration that we all want. At any rate, I look forward to what the Minister has to say. He may draw more encouragement than usual from some of my remarks and I might even vote with him if it comes to that.