Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between Lord Ribeiro and Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top

Tuesday 13th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top]

My Lords, I want to ask the Minister questions, although the debate tempts me into other things. I will start with the other things.

I found the debate fascinating. I have also found some of the re-writing of history fascinating. The previous Government introduced competition, and I am very proud of what the previous Government did in rescuing the health service, as my noble friend on the Front Bench said. The reality is that when we introduced ISTCs there was no pricing in the National Health Service. There were no tariffs. Nobody knew what it cost. The amount of money that the private sector charged was substantially reduced because we put a charge on it, but we had to do something to create the market. I have been extremely frustrated by the Minister saying, again and again, that we introduced preference for the private sector. We were taking the very first steps to introduce architecture which could allow the comparison that he now makes in order to get to a level playing field. However, there was nothing there that would have allowed the previous Government to introduce the architecture of a level playing field from the beginning. I remember discussions at the time with organisations such as Bupa which were really concerned that we were bringing down the amount that the NHS would pay them per patient once we introduced tariffs and pricing.

That was a significant development. It then allowed other developments to take place. Yes, it has allowed the Government to take a comprehensive look at all of this, although, as we have been reminded on occasion, the Government did not need ideologically to say that they had to completely open things up. The Government have admitted that 90 per cent of what they wanted to do could have been done without this legislation. I now suspect that the Government wish that they had never embarked on this in the way that they have done. It has actually meant that most people out there think that, following the pause, there will be no competition. Some of them will be surprised by the debate that we have been having today and, indeed, the debate that we had a couple of weeks ago.

The introduction of foundation trusts was very significant and a real revolution. It said that you had to take control in your own area and be responsible for how you were organising hospital services. That principle is very important. Given the changes that the Government are making in allowing the Secretary of State to intervene in the way that the noble Lord, Lord Newton, described earlier, can the Minister assure me that that will not mean that the Government will be tempted to, for example, raid the successful FTs to ensure that they cover up with sticking plaster those which are not succeeding and therefore not take the difficult decisions?

We are having the debate while, outside, there have been significant reports from the King’s Fund and comments from my noble friend Lord Darzi about the challenges in London. Those challenges will demand that the Government recognise that you cannot have comprehensive healthcare that works effectively, let alone efficiently, on every street corner. There will have to be places that specialise in hips and knees. The noble Lord, Lord Ribeiro, talked of the efficiency of ISTCs. Although it is within an NHS hospital, there is what is essentially an ISTC in Epsom. The hospital, from what I read, may be having problems generally, but its unit that just does hips and knees is now the most efficient in Europe, if not the world. It has done incredible things to make it so, such as buying a taxi firm so that it can ensure that it gets people there and so does not lose any slots. That, of course, helps with efficiency.

We are going to face very different challenges and the Government have to be careful that they do not introduce architecture that institutionalises the superiority of hospitals. One of my concerns about our discussion is that sometimes we reinforce the centrality of hospitals in the modern healthcare system when we should not. We ought to be embedding the centrality of the patient pathway, which is much more about the patient’s experience before they go to hospital and after they leave hospital than the period—I hope it will be shorter and shorter—that they are actually in hospital. That is where competition will play an increasingly important part. There has to be some sort of regulation of other providers but it has to be done in a way that does not reinforce hospitals. This has been the experience of Monitor to date, so is it going to be most effective to have it regulating other bits of the architecture? There needs to be regulation of the private sector and of the voluntary sector that are providing pieces of patient care. How do we do that in a way that does not reinforce hospital care?

I have been fascinated by today’s discussion of the European Union and whether the NHS will be subject to the competition law. I remember very well, as Housing and Regeneration Minister, trying to negotiate with Mario Monti, who simply did not understand that we would frequently want to give support from the public sector, but to have that matched from the private sector. That was seen as anti-competitive and a real problem. I do not want the NHS to get involved in that architecture. I would love the Minister to comment on what his colleague Simon Burns said in the Commons. Mr Burns agreed that the application of EU competition law was inevitable but also desirable. Does the noble Earl concur with his friend in the Commons?

I have also been fascinated by the discussion around how competition is to be measured and the fact that we are now going to measure competition on quality as well as price. Ideologically I support that absolutely, but I am not sure how you do it, and I want to know how the Minister intends that to happen. What is it that will be measured so that, at a local level, proper decisions that are not contestable in court are made around the wording currently in the Bill? We all want to get there but the reality is that it is very difficult to find an objective measure that will be clear about the quality of patient care. We have a long way to go in terms of getting an architecture that will deliver the health service that the majority of people want to see where the patient is at the centre of every decision. I have been impressed with the foundation trust board that I have joined in Durham and Darlington. The businessmen on the board are saying that if you get patient care right, the financial decisions will become much easier and more straightforward. I believe that but we have to be able to get there. The real problem is that the Government have got so many things confused that people out there do not see it as simple. They see it as a confused and muddled agenda that has objectives which do not look for a patient pathway that is clear and open to the patient, with the patient getting a hold of how they can be more in control of that pathway. That is where we all want to get to. I am just not sure that the Government have got us there.

[Lord Ribeiro]

Does the noble Baroness agree with me about the pricing of ISTCs? As a surgeon I had a perfectly good idea of the cost of operations in the private sector because I did private work. I also had a reasonable idea of how much it cost in the NHS. One of the principal reasons why the Labour Government introduced ISTCs was to act as the grit in the oyster to challenge the NHS to reduce its costs and to improve the quality of its care. The issue was not just that the Government did not know what the actual price was going to be.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top]

It certainly was not. I do not believe that the previous Government ever acted just on price, despite what the Minister keeps alleging. The noble Lord might have known what the price was but the price in his hospital was very different from the price in another hospital. One of the problems was that there was massive inconsistency across the health service, and that was being addressed. The Government were also challenging everyone involved in healthcare to be honest about what they were doing and to put patients at the centre, making sure that they got treated more quickly—a very important issue for us and our commitment to the public—and as fairly and as well as possible. We were able to get more consistency by driving through a price mechanism.