Adult Social Care: Funding
Lord Skelmersdale Excerpts(7 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord O'Shaughnessy
The noble Baroness is quite right that this issue has not been dealt with properly over a long time. The Green Paper has a wide remit and therefore will look at all the issues that she has brought to the attention of the House.
Lord Skelmersdale
My Lords, in a recent answer to a supplementary question, the Minister agreed with me that social care and health would operate properly only when they were under the same budget. Will the Green Paper go a little further and consider bringing them under the same management?
Lord O'Shaughnessy
As I said to the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, the Green Paper has a wide remit. It is trying to provide a comprehensive solution to social care funding, which has unfortunately eluded many Governments. In doing so, it naturally needs to look particularly at the interaction between health and social care. For many people now there is no particular distinction between those as they follow their journey, as it were, through the health and care system. The important thing is that the care is joined up and is of high quality.
Hospital Beds: Availability
Lord Skelmersdale Excerpts(7 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord O'Shaughnessy
My Lords, the figures that the noble Lord is referring to are across the whole month. He may be aware that new figures have been published today, which show that an increasing proportion of delayed transfers is due to the availability of social care packages. He will also know that this reflects the changing nature of the patient demographic, which is becoming older and frailer. I agree with him that this needs addressing urgently, which is why the Government took action in the Autumn Statement to increase social care funding. We need to address the wide variation in the rate of delayed discharge from local authority to local authority. As the Prime Minister has said, in the long run we need a more sustainable solution.
Lord Skelmersdale (Con)
My Lords, although all Governments have made great strides in recent years in combining health and social care, is it not now obvious that the only way to complete this process is to have a unified budget?
Lord O'Shaughnessy
I thank my noble friend for that question. He is quite right that integration of services is the main thrust of policy and has been under successive Governments. This is happening in two ways. First, the Better Care Fund is pooling health and social care budgets at local authority level in order to achieve what he is asking for. Also, NHS England is producing sustainability and transformation plans, several of which are moving towards what is called an accountable care organisation, whereby a single grouping takes responsibility for all the healthcare needs of a population, rather than it being split into different services.
Children and Families Bill
Lord Skelmersdale Excerpts(10 years, 11 months ago)
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The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Skelmersdale)
My Lords, this is the resumed Grand Committee on the Children and Families Bill. If there is a Division in the Chamber while we are sitting, the Committee will adjourn as soon as the Division Bells ring and resume after 10 minutes. The Lord Chairman’s watch is the final arbiter. I understand that the Committee is currently debating Amendment 263, which has already been moved.
Care Bill [HL]
Lord Skelmersdale Excerpts(11 years ago)
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Lord Faulks
In response to that, of course the Act provides that a court can give just satisfaction, and the remedy may include something of the sort to which the noble and learned Lord refers. However, if there is, as I think I understand the facts of the case, a violation of ordinary private law principles, the remedy should in those circumstances be available. But I think I have trespassed on the House’s patience for long enough.
Lord Skelmersdale (Con)
My Lords, this debate seems to have degenerated into a recommittal stage, which the noble Lord on the Front Bench opposite called for at the very beginning of today’s proceedings. However, I do not think that he, or I, or probably anybody else, wants to recommit this particular clause which is, after all, a new clause.
Lord Wills
My Lords, I support Amendment 83. I should also apologise to the House for not being present in Committee on this Bill. However, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, has already said, I do have form on this particular issue.
This amendment deals with what is a long-standing anomaly in the scope of the Human Rights Act, which was created originally by the YL case. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, has said, it is not for politicians to determine whether cases are rightly or wrongly decided. It was the considered view of the previous Government—and it remains my own view—that that case produced a result that was not compatible with the original intentions of Parliament in passing the Human Rights Act. With respect to the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, and to all the discussion we have just heard, the intent of the Human Rights Act was not only to provide specific remedies in the sort of case that the noble Lord, Lord Warner, has just described. Among other things, it was also to try to create a new culture in the delivery of public services—a culture of dignity and respect for the individual in relation to the state. It seems to me that this is precisely what this amendment sets out to do. As the noble Lord, Lord Low, said in introducing it, it seeks to extend, and to put beyond all doubt, the fundamental protections of the Human Rights Act to some of the most vulnerable members of our society. I support everything that has been said today in favour of this amendment; there have been very powerful speeches putting forward the argument far better than I can.
As we have heard, this anomaly is something that the previous Government wanted to address. We ran out of time before we could adopt the particular remedy that we thought was appropriate. It is an anomaly that your Lordships have debated before, but without finding a way of making progress. Today we have a real chance to make progress. It is significant that two of the proposers of the amendment—the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, and the noble Lord, Lord Lester—have in the past expressed concerns about previous attempts to deal with this particular issue. The fact that they are supporting this amendment suggests that their concerns have now been satisfied and that they do not feel that there are going to be unwelcome and perverse consequences from dealing with this issue in the way that this amendment proposes. For this reason, and for all the other reasons we have already heard, I hope your Lordships will take this opportunity to put this issue beyond doubt and extend these protections to some of the most vulnerable members of our society.
Care Bill [HL]
Lord Skelmersdale Excerpts(11 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Pitkeathley
My Lords, I, too, wish to speak in support of the amendments and to endorse what the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, said about the recommendations of the Joint Committee. I want to use the opportunity also to consider the needs of family carers as well as those of the person who is dying. I want to emphasise that it is very important that carers are informed about the likely stages at the end of life and that they, too, are able to prepare for the death of a loved one. This includes ensuring that families are well informed when making decisions about where their loved one dies. It has been said by all noble Lords that most people wish to die at home. However, this can put extra pressure on carers, which should be discussed with them by health professionals. These health and care professionals may need further training to ensure that they are identifying and considering the needs of carers at the end of life.
More than 300 carers who have experienced the death of the person they cared for shared their experience as part of this year’s report for Carers Week, which is called Prepare to Care?. Nearly half said that they had not had time to plan about the death. One third of carers stated that they had not given this enough thought and wished that they had planned it better. As one carer said:
“Although you can be aware end of life is coming you have to balance this out with keeping up hope and being positive for the person you care for. Also you just don’t have the time to think ahead. With hindsight I can see that the signs that end of life for the people I was caring for was approaching, but as a carer in that situation at the time I could not see them. I wish the GP had spent some time with me to discuss these things”.
We must bear the carers in mind.
If I may, I would like to say a word about the aftermath for carers of the death of a loved one. Carers often become isolated as result of caring and find it very difficult to maintain social networks and hobbies. When caring comes to an end, so do the carer’s services. The carer is left without any social or emotional support. I never forget the carer who said to me, “I am expected to go from the graveside to the job centre”. Sometimes we expect that of carers. If we could support carers more, I think that more of them would be willing to be part of the team providing end-of-life care and thus gain the advantages which have been so clearly set out by noble Lords.
Lord Skelmersdale
My Lords, I failed to speak at Second Reading and I have failed to speak throughout the Committee stage. However, I believe that this amendment is very important, especially, as the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, said, the introductory subsection thereof. I emphasise that this is not a Second Reading speech. However, if I had spoken at Second Reading, I would have reminded my noble friend Lord Howe on the Front Bench of my long standing view that it will never really work until we have a combined health and social care budget. If we did have it, most of the amendment would be unnecessary.
Baroness Emerton
My Lords, I support the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Warner, and agree with what all the other speakers have said. I remind noble Lords that when care pathways were introduced by the previous Government end-of-life care was not a pathway. The noble Lord, Lord Darzi, listened to a group of hospice workers. They said that they very rarely saw a death in a surgical ward and that they believed that we should look at a care pathway for end of life. What has been said today indicates that we need to concentrate on bringing together health and social care, bringing together social workers and health staff and, above all, seeking the choice of patients. As has already been said, most patients wish to live in their own surroundings and the end-of-life care pathway would take care of not only the person whose life is ending but also the relatives and family around them. I suggest that we think about how we progress the care pathway for end of life.
Mental Health (Approval Functions) Bill
Lord Skelmersdale Excerpts(12 years ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe)
My Lords, the purpose of this Bill is simple but urgent and vital. On Monday, I described to noble Lords how the need for it arose and came to light. I am glad to have this opportunity to continue that discussion today.
Lord Skelmersdale
My Lords, I hesitate to interrupt my noble friend on the Front Bench but it would be helpful to those noble Lords who want to listen to what he has to say about this important Bill if other noble Lords were to leave the Chamber silently.
Earl Howe
My Lords, I am grateful for that. I am glad to have this opportunity today to continue the discussion and explain further why we believe we must take this action. I begin by repeating my deep gratitude to noble Lords on all sides of the House for the highly constructive, sensitive and helpful approach that they are taking to this issue. Were it not for that, we would not be able to respond with the speed needed to resolve matters in the best way available to us and the best interests of patients.
As noble Lords appreciate, detaining a mentally ill person in hospital and treating them against their will is clearly a matter of the utmost seriousness, and must be treated as such both by the law and by health and social care practitioners. The statutory framework is contained in the Mental Health Act 1983, which sets out that for assessments and decisions under certain sections of the Act—including detention decisions under Sections 2 and 3—three professionals are required to be involved: two doctors and an approved mental health professional, usually a social worker. One of the two doctors must be approved under Section 12 of the Act.
To recap, when strategic health authorities were established in 2002, the Secretary of State at the time quite properly and lawfully delegated to them his function under the 1983 Act of approving the doctors able to be involved in making these decisions. Early last week, the Department of Health learned that in four of the 10 SHAs—North East, Yorkshire and Humber, West Midlands and East Midlands—the function of approving clinicians had been further delegated by the SHAs to NHS mental health trusts over a period extending, in some cases, from 2002 to the present day. The issue was identified as a result of a single doctor querying an approval panel’s processes. Ministers were informed later in the week as soon as the extent of the issue became clear and since then have been kept informed of and involved in the action being taken. Our current assessment is that about 2,000 clinicians were not approved properly in line with the provisions of the 1983 Act and that those clinicians have participated in the detention of between 4,000 and 5,000 of the patients currently detained in NHS or independent sector hospitals.
There are two important points to make clear now: first, the decision to detain a patient under the Mental Health Act is primarily a clinical one. There is no suggestion and no reason to believe that the irregularity of the approval process for these clinicians has resulted in any clinically inappropriate decision being made, whether the decision was to detain or not. Nor is there any suggestion that the clinicians approved by mental health trusts are anything other than entirely properly qualified to make these recommendations. All the proper clinical processes were gone through when these patients were detained. There is no reason why the irregular approval process should have led to anyone being in hospital who should not be—or vice versa—and no patients have suffered because of this. The clinicians had no reason to think that they had not been properly approved. They acted in total good faith and in the interest of their patients throughout this period.
As of Friday last week, the SHAs concerned had corrected their procedures and all the clinicians involved had been properly approved. In the light of our legal advice, we do not believe that any decisions that have been made about patients’ care and detention require review because of this irregularity. Doctors should continue treating patients who are currently detained under the Mental Health Act in the usual way.
The second point I want to make is that we have been advised by First Treasury Counsel that there are good arguments that the detentions involving these particular approval processes were, and are, lawful. Given the seriousness of the issues, counsel also argues the need for absolute legal clarity and advises that this is most safely resolved through emergency retrospective legislation. We are heeding that advice. As soon as the irregularity was identified, the department moved swiftly to identify the best course of action and to put the necessary preparatory work in place. Officials immediately sought initial legal and clinical advice and swiftly analysed the options, including the reassessment of all the potentially affected patients, working with the health leads in the regions involved and clinical experts from the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
When the Secretary of State was briefed on the situation, he asked for detailed information on the time it would take and the clinical risks involved in reassessing all potentially affected patients. Last Friday, he asked for an emergency Bill to be drafted over the weekend, as a matter of contingency. He briefed the Prime Minister personally the following day. Following further discussions and analysis over the weekend, the decision to introduce emergency legislation was taken on Sunday.
At all times, our priority has been to resolve this in a way that follows clinical advice about the most sensitive way to deal with a highly vulnerable group of individuals. It would not have been feasible quickly to reassess all the patients and could well have caused great distress to them and their families.
We have also worked to remedy the problem as it relates to current and future detentions. The accountable officers for the four SHAs in question have written to Sir David Nicholson, chief executive of the NHS, to confirm they have made the necessary changes to their governance arrangements. Furthermore, the accountable officers in the other six SHAs have written to Sir David to confirm that they have, in the light of this issue, reviewed their own arrangements and that they are in full compliance with the Mental Health Act.
Our best medical advice is that all the detained patients who have been affected and, where appropriate, family members, should be informed, but first we need to consider carefully how best to give people all the information and advice that they are entitled to in ways that do not cause unnecessary confusion or distress, so we need to take a little more time to make sure we get that right. Sir Bruce Keogh, the NHS medical director, will write shortly to SHA medical directors with further advice, which will be informed by the view of clinical experts and organisations representing detained patients and their families. It is vital that doctors, other mental health professionals and, most importantly, patients and their families have absolute confidence in the decisions made.
I am also aware that Mind and Rethink Mental Illness are providing very helpful advice to patients and their families and carers through their information lines and on the websites. This is just one aspect of the valuable assistance they have provided in dealing with this matter, and I am very grateful to them for it.
I will turn now to the scope of the Bill. Although we are aware of the problem only in the four areas going back to 2002, the Bill applies in principle to the approval of all clinicians under the Mental Health Act since its introduction in 1983. It retrospectively validates the approval of clinicians by those organisations to which responsibility was delegated up to the point when all the relevant clinicians were fully reapproved and their status put beyond doubt.
I would like to clarify who this Bill is targeted at. The “persons” referred to in Clause 1(1) are those who have exercised the approvals function only—no one else, and no other function—under the Mental Health Act 1983. Although it addresses a very particular issue, the Bill deliberately avoids going into further detail about which persons it applies to. Attempting to include a totally comprehensive list of which bodies or people believed in good faith that they were exercising the approvals function in the past would have created what we believe would have been an unacceptably high risk of omitting agencies or individuals that should have been included.
Although the Bill may appear to bestow a wide-ranging retrospective validation on “any person”, in fact, it is very narrowly targeted. It validates only any approvals given in the past and relates only to the function of giving approvals to clinicians as having particular skills—for example, as having special experience in the diagnosis or treatment of mental disorder. Once approved, the clinicians are then allowed to carry out certain functions under the Mental Health Act, such as giving medical recommendations in relation to a patient whose possible detention is being considered. The Bill helps to ensure that we regularise the situation completely and finally.
Crucially, the Bill will not deprive anyone of any of their normal rights to seek redress if they have been detained for any other reason apart from the narrow issue of the delegation of authority to approve by the SHAs. Nor will it affect any future detentions or legitimise any similar failures in future.
Necessary as we believe that it is to address the issue in this way, it is also important that we get to the bottom of how this happened. Therefore, the Secretary of State has asked Dr Geoffrey Harris, chair of NHS South of England and former chair of Buckinghamshire Mental Health Trust, to undertake an independent review looking at how this responsibility was delegated by these four SHAs and, more broadly, the governance and assurance processes that all SHAs use for delegating any responsibilities. We will also ask Dr Harris to look at this in the context of the new NHS structures that come into force from next April to see whether any lessons need to be learnt.
It is imperative that this review is swift, and we have asked Dr Harris to report by the end of the year with recommendations to ensure that every part of the system employs the highest standards of assurance and oversight in the delegation of any functions.
In conclusion, I stress to the House that we have reviewed thoroughly with lawyers, clinicians and NHS managers all possible alternatives to introducing this retrospective legislation. We have been advised that all alternatives would be highly disruptive to the welfare of many of the most vulnerable patients within the mental health system, and would also deprive many other patients of the care they need while any action is undertaken. That is why, in such exceptional circumstances, we are proposing this retrospective legislation.
Social Care: Legislation
Lord Skelmersdale Excerpts(12 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Skelmersdale
My Lords, recent press reports—in fact, they are not that recent—have concerned the quality of care, not least the care given by care assistants. In their consideration of this matter will my noble friend and his department consider the registration and suitability of care assistants?
Earl Howe
My Lords, as my noble friend will recall, we debated this subject extensively during the passage of the Health and Social Care Act. The Government’s position is that voluntary assured registration is the way forward for the time being. However, we have not closed our minds to statutory regulation in this area.
Health and Social Care Bill
Lord Skelmersdale Excerpts(12 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Pitkeathley
My Lords, I was delighted to add my name to this important amendment which builds on several amendments we have discussed in your Lordships’ House with regard to the integration of health and social care. The central point of the amendment is to place a duty on the Secretary of State to secure improvement in the quality of social care services provided by local authorities. It goes on to set out the means of doing so.
These proposals are based on those of the Dilnot commission, of which my noble friend Lord Warner was such a distinguished member and about which there is such consensus among all those who work in or are in receipt of social care. If only the coalition Government had managed to achieve such a consensus about all the proposals in this Bill, we would have saved a lot of time and be a lot more content. There is consensus around the proposals and everybody understands what the social care system is in need of. As we have heard from my noble friend, the system is starved of cash, failing to meet the volume of need, unfair—a lottery—and confusing and difficult to find your way around, especially if you are frail, elderly and confused.
The existing consensus is that the future funding of social care has to be based on a combination of individual and state responsibility and contribution, and that we must achieve a lasting settlement. We have mentioned many times before in your Lordships’ House that the Health and Social Care Bill fails to address the most pressing of all health problems: how to deliver affordable and effective social care for our growing elderly population—a view endorsed, I remind your Lordships, by the Health Select Committee in a recent report.
It is extremely worrying that rumours are circulating that the White Paper on social care, responding to both the Dilnot proposals and the Law Commission proposals about legislative reform in this area, is to be delayed. This would be a huge disappointment as well as a missed opportunity. Moreover, it would renege on the commitment given by the Minister for social care in another place when he said only four months ago that,
“social care has languished and rested in the ‘too-difficult-to-do’ box for far too long. We are the Government who are committed; we see the urgency and the need”.—[Official Report, Commons, 10/11/11; col. 181WH.]
I hope that the Minister will today repeat that commitment in response to this amendment.
We should remember, too, the advantages which would be delivered by accepting this approach. We would spend existing resources—which everybody agrees are short—better. It would improve integration of health and social care systems. When people’s need for social care is not met, they turn to the NHS—resulting in increased numbers of emergency admissions or delayed discharges. The inconsistency between fully funded NHS care and means-tested social care hampers delivery of an integrated care system. Recent statistics from the Department of Health show an 11 per cent rise already in the number of hospital bed days lost to so-called bed blocking, so that costs have risen extremely fast.
In addition, the rights and responsibilities of individuals and agencies would be clear to the public if the Government accepted this approach. If people were clear about their future personal liability, they could plan how they would meet care costs up to the level of the cap, wherever that were placed. We would also stimulate the care market to provide more choice for families and incentives for business. The Dilnot report and its proposals have been called a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. We cannot and should not miss that opportunity. I support the amendment.
Lord Skelmersdale
My Lords, the House seems to have gone remarkably silent after those two introductory supporters of this particular amendment. As some of your Lordships will remember, when I returned from Northern Ireland as the ex-Minister responsible for health and social services, I came as a great fan of combined health and social services. Yet I discovered in my experience there that it would never, ever work unless you had one organisation in total and utter control. This may seem like a Second Reading speech, but it is not intended to be. The Secretary of State mentioned in the amendment means any Secretary of State, and currently we have two Secretaries of State. That is why the notable ambitions of this amendment—and they are notable—will always fail. Therefore, I encourage my noble friend, until a higher authority than himself, senior as he is, gives the imprimatur to take social services away from local government, to resist this amendment.
Baroness Murphy
My Lords, I think that the noble Lord, Lord Warner, is having us on. There is an urgent need to press the Government on bringing forward their White Paper on social care reform, which is the pressing economic and social care issue of our day—more important than this Bill. But we have to get it right. We are expecting a White Paper, and there are many arguments to be had about the recommendations from the Dilnot commission, although there is quite a consensus of opinion, and about the right and wrong and who will pay and when. I hope that we can have those debates in this House. But this issue requires a full Bill. This amendment gives a new Bill inside the Health and Social Care Bill on Report, and I do not really think that it will fly. I can imagine what the noble Lord, Lord Warner, would have done if it had been proposed when he was Health Minister. He would have given it very short shrift—and I urge the Government to do so again. We need a proper recommendation and discussion in the White Paper.
I also remind the House that last year the Law Commission came out with a report on adult care social services that said that we had had endless piecemeal bits of legislation over and over—and this amendment does it all over again. Let us not make the mistake of supporting this amendment. I am very sympathetic to what the noble Lord wants to do, and we all feel very impatient about it, but let us have a proper Bill and proper debates and get it right for the next generation. Frankly, it is our generation and the next one that will benefit from a proper social care reform Bill. Let us get it right and not do it this way.
NHS: Reform
Lord Skelmersdale Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Skelmersdale
My Lords, would my noble friend care to cast any light on the fact that I have received criticisms of the Bill from virtually every health professional body but not one from a patient?
Health: Influenza Vaccination
Lord Skelmersdale Excerpts(13 years, 9 months ago)
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Earl Howe
My Lords, the noble Lord’s figures are slightly historic. Figures due to be published today will give a better picture. I spoke yesterday to the Chief Medical Officer, who told me that the rates to be published at 2 pm today will show a decrease from the figure that he mentioned. There has also been a further decrease since the new figure and it appears that the worst is over as regards the incidence of flu. On the second question, there have been reports of vaccine shortages. We have taken steps to address that by releasing stocks of the monovalent H1N1 vaccine from our national stock. That system is working well. There is an online ordering system, which GPs are using. They are also ordering stock directly from the manufacturers and we understand that that system is working well, too. The reports of shortages are, I hope, a matter of history.
Lord Skelmersdale
My Lords, is my noble friend aware—I am sure that he is not—that over Christmas I presented myself at my GP’s for a flu vaccination? There was no vaccine in the surgery. He gave me a prescription, but there was no vaccine in the pharmacy, where I was informed that the general flu vaccine in this country had run out because the suppliers had run out of stock. I am delighted that the swine flu vaccine is still available, but surely that does not help any attempt to be vaccinated against general flu.
Earl Howe
My Lords, we are very clear that the amount of vaccine produced for this season’s flu to address the probable need for vaccination was more than adequate. It is up to GPs to order the quantity of vaccine that they see as appropriate for their patients. That is what has happened over the past couple of years. Supplies are also ordered independently by private pharmacies. As regards my noble friend’s point on the H1N1 monovalent vaccine, I am afraid that 90 per cent of deaths have been from what is called swine flu, so that is a very appropriate vaccine to use in these circumstances.