NHS: Funding

Lord Reid of Cardowan Excerpts

Monday 17th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

I agree with my noble friend that the primary purpose of the Better Care Fund is clearly to make care better, but it is also a major step forward in making our health and care services more sustainable, and moving to a preventive model that delivers care closer to home and keeps people healthy in the community. GPs have a major part to play in this and I am encouraged by the extent to which they are now engaging in the task of addressing the BCF.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab)]

Will the noble Earl correct the inadvertent misleading of the House by the last noble Lord who spoke? The obligation for doctors to serve at weekends and in the evenings was not removed in 2004 but many years before—as it happens, under the Conservative Government. What happened in 2004 was that although they were not serving at weekends or in the evenings, as had been allowed by the previous Conservative Government, doctors were spending an increasing amount of time on the bureaucracy of finding a replacement doctor. That bureaucratic burden was what was removed from them. Will he confirm that that was the case, not for the first time but for the second time, because I asked him last year and he confirmed that by 2004 almost 90% of doctors had already opted out of night work and weekend work?

[Earl Howe]

The noble Lord has huge experience in this area and his outline is of course right, in that before 2004 we had largely a system of co-operatives in which GPs could elect to work out of hours if they wished. The 2004 contract gave individual GPs and GP practices the option not to do that. While there was no obligation to move away from out-of-hours care, many GPs have chosen to do that.