NHS Waiting Times Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateLord Reid of Cardowan
Main Page: Lord Reid of Cardowan (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Reid of Cardowan's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(1 year, 9 months ago)
Lords ChamberI thank the noble Lord. As I have said previously, innovation, and being able to back that up with investment, is key. The House will see that we have protected a lot of the research funds so that we can do exactly that. That is the direction of travel. The new hospital programme, which I look after, is very much about looking at best practice and innovation around the world and making sure that we employ the best in our new hospitals and across all our trusts.
My Lords, the Minister is relatively new to his department, but even in the number of weeks he has been there, he must recognise that, whatever statistics on inputs he announces at the Dispatch Box, it is not working. There was a time, two decades ago, when we managed as a Government to reduce the maximum waiting time from three years to 18 weeks and the numbers on the waiting list from 1 million to 500,000. There are now 7.2 million on the waiting list—incidentally, there were 4.2 million before Covid. Whatever the Government have been doing for 10 years is not working and people are remaining in pain for prolonged periods, quite apart from the effect on the economy. Will the Minister institute an immediate review centred particularly around patient choice, which is the only thing that will drive down waiting times and waiting lists? It should never have been abandoned in the way it has been by the Government.
I believe that customers—call them patients—should drive performance and improvements. Inputs are important, but I totally agree that in a performance culture outputs are very important. I give credit to the work done in the early 2000s, from which I have tried to learn in the short time I have been here, to really bear down and create a performance culture to get waiting lists down by holding trusts, and now the new ICB CEOs, to account. That is definitely the direction of travel, and I am very happy to learn from things that have worked well in the past.