Health and Social Care Bill
Lord Walton of Detchant Excerpts(12 years, 11 months ago)
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Earl Howe
My Lords, I hear what my noble friend says, but the fact is that the amendments he refers to would reduce Monitor’s independence from political interference. We are clear that we do not want political interference in Monitor’s activities. The intent of the amendment is clearly to give the Secretary of State increased accountability for the decisions around Monitor's functions. We believe that Monitor will be an effective regulator and able to deal with conflicts of interest. Clause 63 requires Monitor to resolve conflicts between its functions. If a failure to resolve conflicts between functions was significant, then the Secretary of State already has the power to intervene under Clause 67. Therefore, there is an intervention mechanism but we suggest that it should be triggered only in the circumstances to which I have referred.
Lord Walton of Detchant
Will the Minister say whether, if Monitor is to meet in public, it will have reserve powers to allow it to go in camera if for any reason it may be required to consider highly sensitive personal information, which ought to preserve confidentiality in respect to the individuals concerned? It is crucial that such a power should be available to it.
Lord Whitty
My Lords, I apologise for not being here at the beginning of the consideration of this group because for once the Committee is making faster progress than I thought, but I have tabled two amendments that relate back to the issue of anti-competitive behaviour, so I will be following on from my remarks about the first of the amendments today. I seek greater clarity from the Minister. Given that Monitor has responsibility for preventing anti-competitive behaviour—in other words, not just the encouragement of competition but also the policing of it—what happens when someone complains to Monitor? In effect, Monitor has been given the same powers as the OFT and other economic regulators in other sectors and, as my noble friend Lord Beecham has just said, is subject to some oversight by the Competition Commission, which has duties in this respect.
Let me give two examples of what in other sectors would be seen as anti-competitive behaviour. One is where two providers in an area get together to divvy up what they know the commissioning body wants and provide a package that is acceptable to the commissioning group. A third provider would like to get in on the action. It is probably qualified, so that is not a hurdle. If that provider then complains to Monitor, is Monitor able to say, “This may appear to be a bit anti-competitive, but actually it is in the interests of patients”? I assume, from all the Minister has said and from what is set out in the document about the role of Monitor, that it means it can say that. But is that the end of the story? Can there be an appeal against Monitor to the courts or, if it is systematic, to the Competition Commission review role?
There is also the opposite scenario: competition laws relate to monopsony and oligopsony as well as to monopoly and oligopoly, so if a number of commissioning groups get together and decide that they will buy collectively from particular providing groups but not from others, is that also grounds for appeal to Monitor? If Monitor nevertheless decides that that is in the interests of patients, is there a further recourse? I was worried earlier today that there might be further recourse and that, despite all the assurances that have been given, Monitor is not actually the final regulator on what is in the patients’ interests, because it is supposed to act in accordance with or reflect the general rules, including EU rules, on competition and procurement.
This situation is going to arise because, with the Government’s encouragement, there will be more providers than those which get commissioned. A failed or disappointed provider must know how the system is supposed to work so that Monitor can look at it and be judged on it. With other economic regulators there is a form of appeal in this respect, to the Competition Commission. It is not used very frequently, but when we are trying to bed in a new system it may well be used more frequently by disappointed and failed competitors. If that is not to happen, it has to be clear in this Bill—and if not in this Bill then by ministerial decree and in regulations—that once Monitor decides something is in the interest of patients that is the end of the story. Otherwise, I cannot see the system working without constant appeals and second guessing.
Lord Walton of Detchant
My Lords, I shall be brief in speaking to these amendments. I wholly agree with the principle outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Warner. There are many circumstances in which competition, properly controlled, will benefit the National Health Service and will benefit our community. But, like the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, I too, having worked in the United States, would be deeply concerned if competition were allowed to run riot. Years ago, I saw the affect of this. For instance, in the Massachusetts General Hospital, where I worked many years ago, the president of the hospital told me that they were required to debate and negotiate with no fewer than 47 different insurance companies in order to obtain coverage for the patients whom they treated.
Yet in the United States you still find, in certain communities, perfectly acceptable patterns of community care which are in many ways excellent, not least the Kaiser Permanente plan in California. I also visited an excellent clinic and associated hospital providing a substantial range of primary, secondary and tertiary care to a very wide community in Marshfield, Wisconsin. The Marshfield clinic serves a very large community in that state. All the people in the community pay an annual subscription in return for which they get a full range of primary, secondary and tertiary care of a very high standard. There are islands of excellence.
So far as competition in this country is concerned, I have always believed that the cap imposed upon foundation trusts in relation to private patients was unfair. It was imposed at a particular moment in time and based upon income derived by those individual trusts in a preceding period, and was grossly uneven. I have always favoured a partnership between the public and private sectors. In such hospitals and foundation trusts I believe there is a great advantage to allowing them to have more income from private patient beds: it not only generates income for the National Health Service, it also persuades many consultants to become geographically whole-time, looking after their public and private patients in the same hospital and not having to spend time, as many have in the past, travelling to private hospitals.
I believe in competition and in the public-private mix. But in pursuing that type of programme, it is absolutely crucial that Monitor has the authority to prevent any foundation trust from overstepping the mark and increasing its private provision to the extent that it will harm the services that it gives to NHS patients. I would love to have an assurance from the Minister that Monitor will be able to fulfil the function of controlling excesses which could damage the National Health Service if private provision went too far.
Lord Patel
My Lords, briefly, we are getting a bit confused between the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Warner, which I support and is about anti-competitive behaviour, and people talking against competition. The amendment is quite clear. It asks Monitor, within a year, to identify barriers to quality care that are anti-competitive. The noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, gave one example and there are others, such as optometry services, which can, if given the opportunity to expand, not only provide good diagnostic services but also treat some minor ailments that do not need referral to hospital. Our amendment is about anti-competitive behaviour. It is not about competition.
Lord Warner
My Lords, I apologise that my enthusiasm for Amendment 274ZZB caused me to speak to it partially in an earlier group. The amendment in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, was put down because we regard it as a probing amendment to the end of Clause 62 that relates to matters that Monitor must have regard to in the exercise of its functions. Its purpose is to raise the issue of the financial stability and governance of adult social care providers in the light of the Southern Cross experience, and to seek the views of the Government on how they propose to use the new regulatory system in the Bill to protect the vulnerable users of adult social care services from providers whose financial structures are fundamentally unstable.
Let me say at the outset that I thought that the Department of Health managed quite well the difficult situation that Southern Cross presented. Few, if any, elderly people had their care seriously disrupted. 20/20 hindsight is a wonderful thing in public policy post-mortems. The truth is that across the political spectrum few were alert to the dangers of overleveraged providers of adult social care. However, we are now alert to the dangers of creative financing arrangements in this area, particularly those instituted by boards of management that do not hang around to face the consequences of their action but simply take the money and run.
It is clear that the way in which care providers are financed and their governance wraparound are matters for rigorous inquiry before they are allowed to contract for the provision of services to vulnerable people. In the case of adult social care, this relates not simply to elderly people whose adult social care is funded by the state but to self-payers. Most of these service providers have a mix of state and self-funders in their homes, with many of the self-funders in effect subsidising the state-funded residents in today’s inadequately funded, state-financed, adult social care. That inadequate funding is itself going to cause some providers to withdraw from the market, and others to merge. It will also distort future investment decisions by those who wish to enter this market, because they will favour investments that concentrate on self-funders.
We face a period of turbulence and uncertainty in the adult social care provider market that makes the detailed working of the regulatory system even more important. That is particularly the case with the positive flood of findings of unsatisfactory care of elderly people in the NHS and adult social care environments. The question of how providers are financed and governed is an integral part of ensuring stable and quality care environments for vulnerable groups. A bright light needs to be shone on these areas in a new regulatory system. Can the Minister say how the Government are going to proceed on this issue and what role Monitor should play? Do the Government intend to move quickly to bring adult social care into Monitor’s remit, or do they see some other approach being pursued? I recognise the heavy burden that is already being placed on Monitor and the range of things that it now has to do. However, I think that the Committee needs to know whether and when this will be transferred to Monitor or whether other mechanisms will be used. The purpose of this amendment is to find out the Government’s intentions.
Lord Walton of Detchant
My Lords, I support the amendment proposed by my noble friend Lady Finlay because this is an extremely important matter. When I was a consultant working as a neurologist in the NHS, if I had a patient who, for instance, had a peripheral neuropathy and turned out to be diabetic, I had no problem in referring him to a colleague within the same hospital for the care of his diabetes or to a colleague in the ophthalmology department for the care of his eyes. I am horrified to discover that in the recent past such individuals have been told to go back to their GP for yet another referral to a different consultant. This is an extraordinary situation. Can the Minister assure us that something in the Bill will stop this kind of nonsense occurring?
Baroness Pitkeathley
My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 274ZZB in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Warner. In the debate on Wednesday last, the noble Lord, Lord Warner, referred to health and social care as being in a symbiotic relationship. That is supposed to be recognised in the title of the Bill, but in fact we have had very few debates about that relationship, other than the fact that everybody says that integration is important and that patients do not understand why such integration has always proved so difficult. We agree that, as patients’ needs are comprehensive—especially patients with long-term conditions—we need comprehensiveness in addressing those needs.
The other thing that we always agree about is that, to meet the Nicholson challenge, services have to be reconfigured so that more services are provided in the home and in the community, instead of in expensive hospitals. Today’s King’s Fund report reminds us of the difficulties that many London hospitals are currently facing, yet reconfiguration is still resisted, not least sometimes by MPs, who should know better.
Another thing on which there is usually agreement is that as social care is just as important to patients and their families as healthcare, it should be given the same status as healthcare. We may agree about that, yet social care plainly does not have that status, despite the commitment to care services of the Minister, his officials at the Department of Health and indeed the noble Earl himself. This amendment seeks to ensure that, no matter who the provider is, the provision of adult social care services is on a sound financial footing and with corporate governance that ensures proper oversight. That is surely necessary beyond question, given the recent Southern Cross debacle to which my noble friend has referred, with the prospect of more such disasters.
As we know, health and social care have always been organised and funded by different groups—one centrally and the other by local authorities. However, as my noble friend reminded the Committee in a debate last week, the majority of the money spent on adult social care by local authorities is in fact funded centrally and passed to local authorities, which commission the services. This amount of money is not sufficient, especially in view of the fact that rising demand has been well established, most recently by the Dilnot commission. It seems that the only way to get more money into the system in these hard times is, first, by showing that money spent on social care will save money in the long term and, secondly, by ensuring that the money is effectively, efficiently and safely spent. Involving Monitor in the way suggested in this probing amendment would go a long way to enabling us to do this better. I can do no better than quote from the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, when she said in our debate last Wednesday:
“The biggest single thing that will make the Bill work or not work is whether everyone in the NHS sees it as their responsibility to understand and work with social care”.—[Official Report, 7/12/11; col. 759.]
Placing this responsibility on Monitor or otherwise advising the Committee how that responsibility will be exercised would be very important in helping us to achieve that aim.
Health and Social Care Bill
Lord Walton of Detchant Excerpts(12 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Patel
My Lords, my name has been added to Amendment 257ZA and I have tabled Amendment 260 in my own name. I shall try to explain why I have added Amendment 260 to this group. There has been some advice to degroup it, and I have been tempted, but I have left it where it is. First, I agree absolutely with what my two friends, the noble Lords, Lord Warner and Lord Turnberg, have said in relation to independence in research and in the expert advice that Public Health England will be giving, and I shall support that by giving some details.
First, however, I shall refer to the funding issue. I do not understand why it has been suggested that Public Health England should not be allowed to bid for external research funding. I cannot see what the threat would be. I have no doubt that it was the Minister who suggested it, and maybe he was given advice, but I wonder why he was given it. I shall give some examples. The current running costs of the HPA covered by government funds are £145 million. On top of that, the agency receives some capital expenditure and depreciation funding. But the agency itself obtains another £150 million from external sources: funding for research and funding from the services of the HPA which are contracted to other agencies and sectors. These include laboratory services, and nuclear and chemical decontamination services. If I was running a university department and I got £150 million-worth of external funding, I would regard that as pretty good—in fact, as excellent. Most of our universities would struggle to get that kind of research funding.
Where does it come from? The largest source of external research funding comes from the National Institutes of Health in the United States for high containment work on infectious diseases. Both the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, and I know from experience that to get a grant from the NIH is very tough. The agency also receives external research funding for vaccine evaluation, as well as from the recent licensing of one of HPA’s research-generated products by the Food and Drug Administration in the United States. The agency has a product called Erwinase that is used to treat childhood leukaemias, which clearly demonstrates the commercial benefit of its ongoing research and income-generating potential. That sets out the picture as far as research income is concerned, and I repeat that I do not understand why the agency should not be allowed to bid for it.
The second issue is that of publication. The agency must be independent enough to be able to publish evidence and offer expert advice on all topics in which it has expertise, regardless of government policy. For the public to have confidence in their public health agency, it must have the independence to publish. The Government may not take the advice they are given, but the agency must have the independence needed to be able to publish it, so again I cannot understand why it might not be allowed to do so. Nor can I understand why it cannot publish in any journal it wishes on any of its research or advice. To achieve all this, it is important that it has an independent board with an independently elected chairman. That is one of the crucial amendments I wish to see if we are going to go ahead with Public Health England as an executive agency of the department. That is also why I have tabled Amendment 260, which offers the belt and braces needed if, as the Government intend, Public Health England is established as an executive agency. If it is not given independence in terms of research, advice and its board, what we would then need to do is set up a non-departmental public body. That is the purpose of Amendment 260.
Lord Walton of Detchant
My Lords, I too support this amendment, although like the noble Lords, Lord Warner and Lord Turnberg, I would much prefer to see Clause 53 deleted from the Bill. Throughout my professional career I have been familiar with the expertise of the former Public Health Laboratory Service. It conducted research, carried out microbiological surveillance, protected the population of this country from epidemics and so on, looked after the safety of our water supplies, and indeed undertook a huge number of other activities. The noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, chaired that body with great ability and distinction.
I just do not understand the purpose of the Government in abolishing its successor, the Health Protection Agency, which has continued to follow that pattern and to supervise the work of laboratories across the country which were formerly part of the Public Health Laboratory Service. Again, it is difficult to understand what the purpose is of abolishing a body that has proved to be so effective, which continues to give excellent service and which, as other speakers have said, attracts external research funding. If it were to be absorbed into the Government under the Secretary of State, I believe that it would be less able to fulfil its functions and to carry out the distinguished research in which it has been involved over many years. For that reason, while I strongly support the proposal that Clause 53 should no longer stand part of the Bill, if—for the reasons that I hope can be explained by the noble Earl—the Government decide that that clause should remain, it is crucial that we have an amendment such as the one before us in order to preserve the activities of such a vital scientific institution.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff
My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 260, but I should like also to talk about the problem of abolishing the Health Protection Agency. I must declare an interest because at the moment my daughter is on a placement there and is most impressed by the work that she has seen. There will be a very specific problem for the Health Protection Agency if it is not completely independent, and that relates to Medical Research Council research funding. If the agency is part of the Department of Health, it will find it more difficult to secure MRC funding. That may also apply to Wellcome funding, but the problem will be particularly acute with regard to funding from the MRC, which is the highest rated funding that the agency can get.
Also, as has already been said, the agency is internationally renowned and recognised for the excellence of its work and looks set to bring in more work to the UK. It is now working with the World Health Organisation on disaster planning. In planning for new disasters that might take place, it is important that countries know what other countries are going to be doing. We have sea borders, but if there is a massive disaster in another country we cannot go to its assistance if we do not know how its systems work. The Health Protection Agency is the leading body in this work on behalf of the UK. It seems very short-sighted to do anything that would destabilise this organisation.
Health and Social Care Bill
Lord Walton of Detchant Excerpts(12 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Walton of Detchant
My Lords, I give very warm support to these amendments, which were so expertly introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Willis. As he said, the report of the Academy of Medical Sciences, after a long period of study and a committee chaired by Sir Michael Rawlins, made a number of important proposals, which the Government, in principle, accepted.
This takes the matter very much further. Following last night’s very exciting and far-sighted Statement by the Government about the developments in research and their sponsorship of translational research, the need to translate the discoveries of basic medical science into practical developments in patient care, the crucial importance of making access available to the NHS database to enable clinical trials to be carried out, and the crucial importance of more rapid access to new medicines and so on through the NHS, it is crucial to recognise that all those proposals are very important. These amendments would carry that forward.
It is also important that the Health Research Agency, which has already been established, is as yet an inadequate vehicle to further the developments to which the noble Lord, Lord Willis, referred in great detail. It is essential to recognise that to carry forward the developments envisaged in the Government’s Statement last night on translational research on the governance of clinical trials and the overall governance of research as a whole in the NHS, something like these amendments must be put in the Bill.
I want to comment briefly on the proposals set out in one of the amendments, to the effect that it would be sensible to remove from the Human Tissue Authority and the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority their research components and that these would much more happily settle in the newly defined Health Research Authority. There is a lot of sense in that, because the research carried out by these organisations is important, and it is research that is in many ways crucial to the development envisaged in these amendments.
However, it is important to recognise too that the Human Tissue Authority in its present existence has a major responsibility for regulation—regulating the departments, for instance, in which anatomical work is carried out, and regulating departments of pathology and other teaching functions which are absolutely vital. Similarly, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority is not primarily concerned with research but also has major licensing functions, in licensing organisations in which work under the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act can be carried out.
I understand that there has been a proposal by the Government that the functions of the HTA and the HFEA might be transferred to the Care Quality Commission. I would only comment, as John McEnroe said, that you cannot be serious. The Government cannot really be serious. This is not an organisation which is set up to handle that type of information. It is crucial to recognise that the Care Quality Commission has very specific responsibilities. It has taken on the responsibilities of three previous bodies, which were involved in looking at healthcare, social care and psychiatric care. It is carrying a major load—
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe)
Will the noble Lord give way? I am sure the noble Lord will know that through this Bill we cannot transfer the functions of either the HTA or the HFEA to any body at all. Indeed, that was the substance of my undertakings to this House under the Public Bodies Bill debate—that we would defer consideration of those matters until a later Bill. This Bill simply covers the reform of the health service, obviously, and my noble friend has sought to introduce an amendment to set up the Health Research Authority as a statutory body. But I gave an undertaking to this House that I take very seriously: that the consultation process on the transfer of functions from the HTA and the HFEA has to take place. It would be premature for this Bill to cover that matter. For that reason alone, I urge noble Lords to be very cautious about my noble friend’s amendment, about which, nevertheless, I will say some warm words.
I wanted to specifically cover that matter, as I notice the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, looks as if she wants to rise to her feet. I can understand why, because it is important for the Committee to understand that the matters to which the noble Lord has just referred are matters which we will reach in due course, rather than today.
Lord Walton of Detchant
I am very grateful to the noble Earl for clarifying the position, but it is important that in the longer term we shall have to learn more about the future of those two very important authorities. In the mean time, the crucial importance of these amendments is to clarify in the Bill the responsibilities of this new organisation which is going to be responsible for regulating research in the UK, and which will streamline and improve the present mechanisms for research approval in many different situations. Therefore, I strongly support these amendments.
Lord Patel
My Lords, I hesitated to rise last time because I saw the Minister getting up, and I thought he was about to make a pronouncement to stop the debate because he had a solution to it all, but I realise now that was not the case.
I strongly support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Willis. I have my name attached to it. It is crucial that we hear more than just the setting up of the authority, as the Government have announced a few days ago, to take charge of the National Research Ethics Service. I was part of that organisation until I finished my time in the National Patient Safety Agency and was responsible for setting up much of its work, so I take the blame for its shortcomings, if there were any.
The issue we are discussing is why there is a need to set up the Health Research Authority with wider functions than those of NRES. The report produced by the Academy of Medical Sciences identifies serious issues which are important if we are going to deliver on the life sciences strategy announced yesterday and on which I have highly commended the Government; it is excellent. But if we are to deliver on it, we need to streamline the regulatory processes that currently are so cumbersome. For instance, an NHS research and development permission is required at every NHS site where the research is to take place, and the review by the Academy of Medical Sciences confirms that this is perceived to be by far the greatest barrier within the regulation and governance framework. The current process for obtaining research permissions across multiple NHS sites is inefficient and inconsistent. Local negotiation about research contracts and costings is a further source of delay, together with a lack of agreed timelines within which approval decisions are made. Governance arrangements are therefore very important, and the noble Lord, Lord Willis, told us that the report has highlighted that there should be a governance board as part of the Health Research Authority.
The noble Lord gave some examples of delays which had been highlighted by respondents, including in kidney research, stroke research and multiple clinical trials involved in heart research. The solution is to set up an authority which can provide a national research governance service as a part of it. Clinical trials are another example. The noble Lord mentioned how our global share of clinical trials has fallen dramatically. This is particularly related to the fact that it is cumbersome to conduct clinical trials in the UK. To address the challenges identified around clinical trials, improvements are clearly necessary at both the European and the UK level. I know that discussions are going on and that the department is involved in a revision of UK clinical trials, and I hope that they will come to some fruition. The noble Lord also said that the relationship between the new Health Research Agency and the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency will be crucial in improving the current system. That is an important point, because it was the relationship between the MHRA and clinical trials that at times caused problems.
The problem is that the existing regulation and governance pathways, which evolved in a piecemeal manner over several years, have now become dysfunctional. Although new regulatory bodies and checks have been introduced with good intentions, the sum effect is a fragmented process characterised by multiple layers of bureaucracy and uncertainty in the interpretation of individual pieces of legislation and guidance. This has produced a lack of trust in the system along with duplication and overlap of responsibilities. There is no evidence that these measures have enhanced the safety and well-being of either patients or the public, so the answer lies in now creating a Health Research Authority with multiple functions in order to go forward.
Life Sciences
Lord Walton of Detchant Excerpts(12 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Walton of Detchant
My Lords, I congratulate the Government on this excellent and far-sighted Statement. It was anticipated to a degree by the article in yesterday's Times by Mr David Willetts and by the Times’s first leader today that highlighted the importance of these developments. I was very glad to see that it was stressed that excellence in health service research is not entirely in the south-east of England. The leader picked out Newcastle University Medical School as another centre of excellence in this programme of research.
Some 15 years ago I chaired the House of Lords Select Committee inquiry into international investment in UK science. We found that 40 per cent of all American overseas investment in science came to the UK and 42 per cent of all Japanese investment came to the UK because of the perceived strength of the UK science base. The science base remains strong and powerful, as the Statement makes clear. However, at the time we recognised that translation of the results of the research into effective changes in patient care was inadequate. The Statement makes it clear that the Government intend to support translational research to the benefit of our community.
I will ask the Minister one or two questions. We live in an era in which genomic medicine and the results of molecular biology are being translated into new developments that may benefit patients with many severe crippling diseases and long-term conditions, not least some that are genetically determined. Genomic medicine is identifying the gene defects and medicines are beginning to be introduced that may overcome these genetic defects.
The catalyst fund is crucial. I would rather not call it a valley of death fund but a postponement of death fund, because if the drugs that are introduced as a result of this major research come to market, it is very important to recognise that in many instances the number of patients likely to benefit, particularly those suffering from rare diseases, will be small, and therefore commercial exploitation will be extremely difficult. The drugs that are now emerging are known as orphan and super-orphan drugs. The previous Government put money into a cancer drugs fund because of the expense of many of the new drugs that were being developed. Will this Government consider the possibility of developing a fund for the exploitation of these orphan and ultra-orphan drugs, because today's discovery in basic medical science will bring tomorrow's practical development in patient care?
The previous Government produced the Technology Strategy Board as a major halfway house between universities and science institutes on the one hand and commercial exploitation by companies on the other. The Statement takes that one step further with the catalyst fund. Will the Government consider funding orphan drugs for the treatment of these rare diseases?
Earl Howe
The noble Lord makes an extremely important point. He will know that the Government have already established a cancer drugs fund which is designed to enable patients to access drugs that their doctors feel they should receive but which the NHS will not otherwise fund. We are putting £200 million a year for the next three years—totalling £600 million, in other words—towards this fund. That fund is there for orphan medicines and for the treatment of rarer cancers as much as it is for more common cancer treatments. So, as a temporary device, that fund exists.
We have taken the view that the development of a value-based pricing structure for medicines should enable us to move to a situation where drugs are assessed for value in their broadest sense and priced accordingly. In that way, if the value is computed as being high for patients, the NHS will pay the corresponding price and the patient will be able to access that drug. I would, however, say that in the case of orphan medicines the work is at an early stage. It is clear that some orphan drugs are likely to be priced very high, and it is of course necessary to ensure that the value of those drugs as reflected in the price is one that the NHS is prepared to pay. As I say, we have work to do. I can update the noble Lord as time goes on in that area. However, I can tell him that this is very much within our sights.
Health and Social Care Bill
Lord Walton of Detchant Excerpts(12 years, 12 months ago)
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Baroness Murphy
We have been urged to hurry up today; we have all heard of speed dating so this is going to be speed debating.
When I first read the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Emerton, I did not agree with it on the basis that if you legislate for a minimum number of registered people or nurses, there is a tendency for people to adopt the lower level. I have looked at international evidence and I know that 10 years ago in California they mandated by specific legislation a minimum qualified nurse staffing level in surgical wards in intensive care. It has had a dramatic effect not only on the wards in those hospitals but on other hospitals in California where the standards have risen, mortality rates have fallen. There has been a very large study of 8,000 patients in California, and the other two comparative sites were in Pennsylvania and New Jersey; there is no doubt whatever that there has been a dramatic change and a very positive change, and most hospitals staff above the minimum. Those fears have not been founded.
The Dr Foster document that came out this week clearly showed the relationship that we know about internationally between poor staffing levels on wards for older people and mortality rates and care levels, and its relation to the morale of staff who work on those wards. I am, almost reluctantly, driven to accept the wisdom of the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Emerton, which I support.
Lord Walton of Detchant
My Lords, I, too, wish to support the principles underlying the amendment proposed by my noble friend Lady Emerton. However, one concern I have particularly relates to paragraph (4) of Amendment 139. Concerns have been expressed in many quarters over the past two years about the variable quality of the health care assistants employed in many of our hospitals. Some of them are absolutely excellent, but some of them—particularly in certain care homes—have had very little training and there is no process at the moment by which such care assistants can be registered; nor is there any formal requirement of a specific training or educational programme for these individuals. The time is approaching when there must be minimum standards of education and training laid down for such people. I trust that, in relation to what is said in paragraph (4), we can have an assurance from the Minister that this is an issue that the Government will consider.
As the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, said, the same problems arise in relation to psychologists. Clinical psychologists have a formal training programme but not all psychotherapists, who do not hold a medical qualification—they do not have any such programme, although many of them make an outstanding contribution. The regulation of psychologists has been discussed for several years but little progress has been made. Can the Minister tell us whether that is still under consideration?
My final point relates to the fact that the regulation and registration of many of the other professions working in the NHS, in hospitals and the community—occupational therapists, physiotherapists and others—of course comes under the Health Professions Council. This is a Health and Social Care Bill. Only two years ago, a statutory authority for the registration and regulation of social workers was created, the General Social Care Council, and that body is in existence. I want to ask the Minister: is it proposed, as I believe is the case, that the Government are going to bring that body within the ambit of the Health Professions Council, or are they going to make it subject to the oversight of the council for regulatory excellence? That is a matter upon which the Committee needs to be reassured.
Lord MacKenzie of Culkein
My Lords, my name is down on this group of amendments. I very much agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, said about the situation in California, because the importance of being attached to the mandated levels of staff is self-evident from that.
This issue has been around for as long as I can remember. It was around when I was practising a long time ago. It was around when as a leader of a predominantly nursing trade union I had discussions with health departments in the days when there was perhaps more famine than feast in nursing levels. However, Ministers and Secretaries of State never seem to want to make a real effort to engage with stakeholders on this difficult issue.
There have been a number of efforts over the years, a number of tools used to measure patient dependency to staffing levels and to skill mix ratios as an adjunct to professional judgment. Some of these were useful, some—particularly imports from abroad—were much less so. I can remember one of them, an import from the USA, probably at some considerable expense, which was known by the particularly ugly acronym of GRASP. That stood for, if I remember correctly, “the Grace Reynolds Application and Study of PETO”—I am never quite sure who or what “PETO” was. It sought to measure direct care activities and interventions, so that the correct nursing staff levels were always available. In reality, that tool caused uproar, because far too often it managed to show that wards were overstaffed when the reality was that staff were struggling.
There have been other, more useful, tools and systems, but some of them used up a lot of nursing time on paperwork, and more often than not, nurse managers had to retreat in the face of financial pressures. They have to retreat in the face of financial pressures because there is no mandate to defend a professional judgment in the face of these financial pressures. There is no agreed ratio of nurses to numbers of patients, and no agreed ratio of trained nurses to healthcare assistants.
That is the issue addressed in these amendments, and if the wording is defective, as the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, is suggesting, I really want to concentrate on nursing here, and if need be we can bring that back at Report. We cannot escape the fact that the correct levels of staffing, with the correct skill mix ratios, are vital for the proper level of care, whether that is in acute wards, in primary care or in care homes.
Healthcare is complex, and I am not suggesting for one moment that the correct staffing level will in itself always guarantee good technical and good compassionate nursing care. However, it is a sine qua non that getting staffing and skill-mix ratios wrong means that it is difficult, if not impossible, for nurses and midwives to deliver anything like the high quality care that they want to deliver. We know that outcomes and mortality are affected, and I associate myself with the figures given by the noble Baroness, Lady Emerton.
Given the fears about financial pressures relating to future reductions in clinical posts—and certainly in relation to frontline nursing posts—it is no good for the Government to express expectations that quality is going to be improved or maintained without taking steps to ensure that their expectations are translated into reality and into practice. There will be more problems to come, as in the recent CQC report, as evidenced in the inquiries into the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, unless the steps proposed in these two amendments, or something like them, are taken on board.
We all want the best for patients and these amendments will go some of the way to ensuring that that will be the reality for the future. A mandated guarantee of safe staffing levels and ratios is essential for one principal reason and one principal reason only—patient safety and outcomes. These amendments have my wholehearted support and I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Lord Walton of Detchant
My Lords, it will not surprise your Lordships to learn that this is an issue in which I take an increasing personal interest. Having said that, I should add that there are islands of great excellence in relation to studies of the care of the elderly in the UK. Professor Linda Partridge is doing wonderful work in University College Hospital, and I have an avuncular interest in the important Institute for Ageing and Health, chaired by Professor Tom Kirkwood, in Newcastle. These are islands in which the care of the elderly and the research into ageing processes is being carried forward. The problem is far wider. The problem is with standards of care in the community, in care homes and in our hospitals, where it is perfectly clear that standards have become very uneven. We have heard all too many stories in the press about inadequate care. For this reason, I believe that it is absolutely right to follow up the proposal made by the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell. I think that England needs a commissioner. There is even a possible case to be made out for establishing a clinical network relating to the care of the elderly. Basically, most clinical networks have been disease-orientated, related to specific diseases, but this problem is now one of such increasing importance in the country at large that the Government ought to support establishing a commissioner and a clinical network for the care of the elderly.
Baroness Pitkeathley
My Lords, in rising to speak in strong support of the amendments moved by my noble friend, I want to remind the Committee of the large number of older people who are not in receipt of health and social care services but are actually providing them. Of course, I refer to the increasing numbers of very elderly carers. Although the peak age for caring is still 45 to about 60, we are increasingly looking at elderly spouses looking after their elderly spouse, or much older parents looking after a child with special needs who is living very much longer than anyone would have expected hitherto. So the services that we think about—housing, transport, care services—must be tailored to the needs of these older carers too.
Of course we also have economic reasons for doing so, because many people have become poor in their old age by virtue of the fact that they provided care, and they are often in poor health as a direct result of their caring responsibilities. I remind your Lordships that these are the people who are most affected at the moment by cuts in local authority services and the voluntary sector. I hope that the Minister will be able to give an assurance that the needs of older carers will also be included in government priorities.
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Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
My Lords, I speak to Amendment 110ZA. In tabling the amendment and Amendment 343A, I was mindful of information from the Prostate Cancer Charity, which I strongly support, and from members of the Epilepsy Society. Of course I am aware that many other people with different chronic diseases, and those who care for them, are concerned about these issues.
As noble Lords are aware, prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men in the UK. In England, 30,000 men are diagnosed with it every year, and there are 215,000 men living with and beyond the disease. Ten thousand men die from prostate cancer every year. Currently, clinical nurse specialists for men with prostate cancer have to care for a worryingly high number of new patients compared to nurses for people with other common cancers. I am therefore worried that the financial pressures on the NHS and the cost of reform will threaten those already overstretched specialist nurses, who are so vital in driving up the quality of care for people with cancer.
Access to a clinical nurse specialist improves the experience of people with cancer at every stage of their journey and ensures that they have access to the vital support and information they need. This has been evidenced by the results of the 2010 National Cancer Patient Experience Survey. If patients are to have more control over decisions related to their care and report a good experience of care, they need the clinical and emotional support, information and expertise that a clinical nurse specialist can provide.
As the noble Earl will be aware from his association with the epilepsy organisations, NICE guidelines state that epilepsy specialist nurses should be an integral part of the medical team providing care to people with epilepsy. Even with investment made under my Government, 60 per cent of acute trusts and 64 per cent of primary care trusts did not have an epilepsy specialist nurse in 2009. SIGN guideline 70 states that,
“all epilepsy care teams should include an epilepsy specialist nurse”.
There are around 150 epilepsy specialist nurse posts, with a further 250 to 300 nurses who have undertaken training but are not in a role due to the shortage of posts.
As all noble Lords will be aware, specialist nurses save the NHS money by releasing consultants’ time, reducing A&E admissions, enhancing patients’ adherence to treatment and reducing the use of hospital beds. Therefore, I am proposing two amendments that would place duties on the NHS Commissioning Board to have regard to the continued access of patients to clinical specialist nurses. The first would support the board’s existing duty as to the improvement in quality of services and the second would create a new standalone duty. I trust the Minister will be able to accept my amendments.
Lord Walton of Detchant
My Lords, I rise to support Amendment 109A. There is no doubt at all that for many years now the work of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, NICE, has made a major contribution to the National Health Service. There is a widespread feeling in the public at large that NICE deals with nothing other than whether or not to recommend the approval of certain drugs for the treatment of disease within the NHS. However, NICE’s commitment spreads much more widely than that. It examines procedures; it examines complicated interventions of all kinds; it examines the introduction of new and innovative techniques, new instruments and other procedures in the NHS. Its remit is exceptionally wide.
I know full well that the noble Lord, Lord Newton, says he is not going to pursue this amendment to a vote, but it is important that we have some assurances from the Minister. As my noble friend Lord Butler says, it is clear that, although NICE guidance in general terms is something with which health authorities and health bodies of all kinds will be expected to comply, there are clearly circumstances, particularly at a local level, where, for the reasons he gave, such compliance would be inappropriate. The amendment takes full note of that as being an important issue.
However, we must be sure, in implementing the recommendations of NICE, that we do not overlook the crucial importance of ensuring that the national Commissioning Board will have a duty to promote innovation in its annual report. It is also crucially important, when we come to look at innovation tariffs much later, in Amendment 288H, to see that the tariffs system will not act as a counterincentive to the adoption of innovation and of new technologies. These are issues upon which it is important to seek assurances from the Minister.
Perhaps I may also add to what the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, said. The work of specialist nurses is extraordinarily important to the NHS, and not least in my own field of neurology, where nurses who are specialised in multiple sclerosis, Parkinsonism, epilepsy and many other conditions have made an outstanding contribution to the clinical care of patients. In many instances, their work and advice have prevented unnecessary admissions to acute wards of patients suffering from these conditions. They are invaluable. Unfortunately, over the past five or six years, we have identified instances where cash-strapped health bodies of various kinds have diverted some of these specialist nurses into standard nursing care. I hope that the Minister can give us an assurance that the role of specialist nurses in the NHS is going to be enshrined in the Bill and that the Government will recognise that such nurses are there for a special purpose, not to provide general nursing care in hospital wards and out-patient departments.
Lord Walton of Detchant
My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for confirming that the Government are working with the BMA. Is it not also very important, in relation to confidentiality, that they should also work with the General Medical Council which, after all, has provided very detailed advice to doctors about confidentiality issues?
Earl Howe
My Lords, the noble Lord is quite right, and my understanding is that we are doing that as well. Meanwhile, I can tell my noble friend Lord Marks that we will consider the provisions highlighted by Amendments 153ZZA and 153ZZB as part of this process.
My noble friend also raised the issue of inequalities. In earlier debates I highlighted the very significant departure made in the Bill that, for the first time ever in this country, the Secretary of State will be legally obliged to have regard to the specific need to reduce health inequalities, whatever their root cause. The board and the CCGs will also have this duty, which clearly emphasises our commitment to equity and fairness across the health service. We believe that the phrase “have regard to” completely captures the intention of the legislation; that is, that the board and the CCGs must consider the need to reduce inequalities in every decision they take. That, I hope, addresses the essence of Amendment 118. This is consistent, as I think it should be, with the public sector equality duty, which is phrased in exactly the same way. As the board already has a responsibility for all patients in the population, its general duty on inequalities also applies this widely.
Under Amendment 119, the board would have to have regard to the duty on inequalities in allocating resources to CCGs. We recognise fully the importance of ensuring that allocations give CCGs the resources to meet the distinctive needs of their local population. Again, our preference is not to place particular weight on one factor or set of factors in legislation. In fulfilling this duty, the board will also need to work in collaboration with health and well-being boards and local authorities. We have already debated the various duties on the board to participate in certain activities of health and well-being boards.
On Amendment 137A, of course it will be important to ensure that all providers contribute to the fulfilment of these duties. Some public sector duties, such as the duties under the Equality Act, already apply to anyone exercising a public function, which includes private providers who supply NHS services. The specific duties in the Bill are placed on the board and CCGs, and they remain responsible for exercising them even when they contract with another body to provide services. It is, therefore, incumbent on them to ensure that these commissioning arrangements, and the ongoing monitoring of services provided under them, support the fulfilment of their duties.
I am not sure whether the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, spoke to her Amendment 343A, but if I cover it briefly, it may be helpful to her. The amendment probes how long it will take NICE to produce the full range of quality standards. As the noble Baroness probably knows, the ambition is to create a core library of NICE quality standards that covers the majority of NHS activity, and supports the NHS delivering against the outcomes in the outcomes framework. The programme is ideally placed to deliver a steady stream of quality standards over the agreed timescales and this will lead to a comprehensive library of quality standards within, we hope, about five years. Therefore, I am afraid the timescale envisaged in her amendment is too short.
I turn now to the group of amendments introduced by my noble friend Lady Cumberlege on maternity services. I am grateful to her and, indeed, the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, for giving us the opportunity to consider this question. I hope I can provide some reassurance that the new commissioning arrangements will provide a very secure basis for quality improvement in these services. Women should always expect—and always receive—excellent maternity services that focus on the best outcomes for them and their babies, and which optimise women’s experience of care. Getting maternity care right from the start can help tackle the negative impact of health inequalities and begin to improve the health and well-being of mother and baby.
We are committed to improving outcomes for women and babies, and for women’s experience of care. Three of the improvement areas in the NHS Outcomes Framework for 2011-12 focus on improving maternity services, by reducing perinatal mortality, by reducing admissions of full-term babies to neonatal units and by improving the experience of women and families of maternity services. My noble friend spoke of variation in services and that was the theme of the very powerful speech by the noble Lord, Lord Mawson. We are committed to ensuring consistency in the quality of maternity services. From April 2012, a maternity experience indicator will be introduced as part of the NHS outcomes framework. It will allow us to chart a woman’s experience of care through antenatal care, labour, delivery and postnatal care.
To support the NHS in improving outcomes in pregnancy, labour and immediately after birth, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence is developing new quality standards based on the best available evidence on antenatal care, intrapartum care and postnatal care. It is outcomes and quality that matter, and the NHS Commissioning Board will be publishing a commissioning outcomes framework for clinical commissioning groups. The commissioning outcomes framework will rely on the national outcomes framework set for the board and NICE quality standards. On top of that, the NHS Commissioning Board could decide to include guidance on the matter in the commissioning guidance that it must publish for CCGs and to which CCGs must have regard.
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames
My Lords, I shall speak briefly to Amendments 193 and 197, amendments to proposed new Sections 14T, on promotion of involvement of each patient, and 14U on the duty as to patient choice.
The Bill and our debates on it have been characterised by a recognition of the importance of patient involvement and patient choice, and a great deal has been said about those two things in this debate. It is important that we recognise and welcome the new Sections 14T and 14U to the NHS Act, which will enshrine those in statute, but it is also important to note that this is not an entirely new idea. In many areas of medical care, patient choice has been with us for some time. Patients currently have a choice of GP practice; they have a choice of hospital; they have a choice of the GP whom they wish to see within a practice; and they have a right to be informed.
However, there is in practice all too often a gap between the theory and reality. The reality is that although people may theoretically have the choice, they do not know that they have the choice. They do not know despite the excellent section on choice on the NHS website and the literature that is put out about choice at the national level. The amendments are designed to impose on clinical commissioning groups at the local level the duty to take steps to inform patients about their right to be involved and their right to make choices. They state, in certain terms, that each group,
“must take steps to inform patients, their carers and their representatives of the right to be involved in such decisions”,
and, in the other cases,
“to make such choices”.
They are simple amendments, and it may be a matter of regret that they are necessary, but simply having the right in the statute book will not do unless we can also ensure that patients are informed of those rights.
Lord Walton of Detchant
My Lords, I rise briefly to support the principle underlying Amendment 198, so ably proposed by my noble friend Lord Kakkar, relating to the crucial importance of making clear that there must be a relationship between the NHS Commissioning Board, local commissioning groups and academic health partnerships. In using that term, I want to be quite clear in what I mean. I am not referring simply to the five academic health science partnerships which have been created within the past few years specifically in certain areas of the country by the NHS; I am talking about the crucial importance of being involved with everyone who is concerned with the teaching of medical students and the training of young doctors and other healthcare professionals.
There is no doubt that years ago, when the health service began, there was an article of faith to the effect that professors, lecturers and readers in the medical schools and universities employed by the universities, those that had clinical contracts, had a duty to spend half of their time on service to patients. In other words, they had honorary clinical contracts, they saw patients and they carried on in that capacity giving services to the NHS, in return for which there was also an article of faith that consultants employed by the National Health Service in teaching hospitals had a duty to involve themselves in the training of medical students and the supervision and training of young doctors who were being prepared for work in a variety of different professions.
There has been a total transformation of the scene over the course of the past 20 or 30 years, because academic appointments are no longer restricted to a small group of hospitals, which used to be called the teaching hospitals. They also take place and are based, in many instances, in other hospitals, sometimes in old regional hospitals at a distance. In those hospitals, not only do we have academic people employed by the university involved with teaching, but many of those hospitals are now called university hospitals. It is a recognition of the fact that medical students now are trained across a huge number of hospitals in what were the regions. Many of them spend considerable periods away from the centre around the medical school. Therefore, a crucial relationship must arise between the academic doctors working in those other hospitals outside the main centre and the commissioning groups.
We must also not forget the crucial importance to the NHS, as we heard a few days ago in discussion of the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Willis, relating to research, of not only the academic departments but also the consultants working in general hospitals and others who have significant responsibility for being involved in clinical research. As I said when we discussed those amendments, today's discovery in basic medical science brings tomorrow's practical development in patient care. In particular, these academic relationships are crucial when one begins to consider the importance of clinical trials of new procedures, new drugs, and so on, which may be carried out across not only a wide range of hospitals but in the community. A great deal of teaching is now going on in general practices, which makes the relationship between academic doctors in academic centres and commissioning groups even more important. I therefore support the principle and the purpose underlying Amendment 198.
Lord Neill of Bladen
I make one comment on the amendments, which also goes to the Government’s fundamental philosophy, with which we all agree, that patients should be told about their condition and kept fully informed. My experience in recent years has been visiting hospitals and wards with elderly people in them. You cannot but become aware of the inability of a lot of the patients to understand what it is they are being told or to look after their own notes. There is a danger, if we are not careful, of theory and reality moving apart from each other. There has to be a true awareness of the need to get the relevant knowledge to the right person. Sometimes, it will not be the patient; it will be the patient's spouse, daughter, son or whatever. We should keep that in mind.
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Baroness Finlay of Llandaff
I add my thanks for the Minister’s remarks. I look forward to seeing amendments which thread education and training through all parts of the Bill with duties on everybody at every level.
Lord Walton of Detchant
The Minister has completely taken the wind out of my sails. I had every intention of going at this hammer and tongs because all the medical organisations and all those involved in education and training are deeply concerned about the absence of detail in the Bill. The Minister has now reassured us greatly. We look forward earnestly and with keen anticipation to seeing what he proposes for the Report stage and hope that it will be adequate.
Baroness Emerton
I rise without notes, which is very unusual for me, to thank the Minister very much indeed. There is anxiety about education among nurses, midwives and particularly community nurses—they are getting very agitated. Therefore, I am absolutely delighted that we shall see something soon.
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Lord Walton of Detchant
I have a short but, I believe, relevant question for the Minister. As he is aware, a medical charity called HealthWatch has existed for some years. I have the honour to be a patron of it. Every quarter it produces incisive commentaries on health matters that are not always totally in line with government policy. Has the department been able to work out some kind of mechanism by which any potential confusion in the public mind between the charity and this body, which is to be created under this Bill, can be avoided?
Baroness Masham of Ilton
My Lords, I want to ask the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, about her safeguarding amendments, which are very interesting. Would she not also put down a safeguarding amendment about the funds? Jobs will not be able to be done unless funds are safeguarded.
Lord Warner
My Lords, I should like to respond briefly to the noble Baroness. There is nothing in the amendment that would stop this information being given to Monitor. If people want to amend the amendment in terms of Monitor as the customer for it, I do not feel strongly about that. I have put it under the national Commissioning Board because one of the things it will be doing is, I suspect, giving guidance to clinical commissioning groups on the nature of contracts. One of the requirements that can be used to drive change in this area is contractual requirements on people in terms of the standardisation of accounts. I saw the national Commissioning Board as likely to be able to deliver through this independent panel—which can be as short lived as one wants—the kind of changes that we need.
I want to emphasise to the House that the financial situation in the NHS is serious and will get really serious over the next few years. We need to improve very rapidly the quality of the financial management accounting systems in the NHS. That is a separate issue from the assets and procurement issue, to which the noble Lord, Lord Owen, has very ably drawn attention, because it is another long-standing problem. The standardisation of management accounts is an urgent issue for the NHS in the brave new world that it is going into, particularly with the large increase in the number of new organisations that are going to start for the first time to handle big sums of money without much clarity about how they are supposed to account for it.
Lord Walton of Detchant
My Lords, I believe it would be helpful to the Committee, even if one leaves aside the crucial role of Monitor with its new, major responsibilities, if the Minister could let us know what kind of administrative support, and in particular what kind of financial management support, Sir David Nicholson and his staff in the national Commissioning Board will have. Can he give us any information about that?
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
My Lords, I am not sure whether my intervention will complicate the debate further but I very much support the sentiments behind the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Warner. The idea of standardised management accounts could be very helpful. One of the questions I invite the Minister to address is connected to my concerns about how we ensure that the NHS as an environment for research and innovation and as an engine for our economy is properly promoted and understood. Can the Minister comment on what the role of the Office for Budget Responsibility might be in looking at the NHS spend—the billions of pounds that go into the NHS—and whether there is a role for the Office for Budget Responsibility in looking at how the economy is benefiting from the investment that we make as a country in the NHS.
Health: Early Diagnosis
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Earl Howe
My Lords, we have provided funding for a number of local lung cancer awareness campaigns. On 10 October, we launched a five-week regional lung cancer awareness campaign in the Midlands, using TV, radio, press and face-to-face events. All those campaigns are aimed at improving public awareness of the signs and symptoms of lung cancer and to encourage people to visit their GP when they have symptoms. An evaluation of the impact of those campaigns is now taking place. I do not have the figure in front of me of the cost of those specific campaigns, but I shall let my noble friend know.
Lord Walton of Detchant
Does the Minister accept that, with recent advances in molecular biology and genomic diagnosis, many previously untreatable rare diseases have been identified, and that early diagnosis is crucial in order to introduce the newly available treatments for those conditions? Is he satisfied that the national Commissioning Board, with its outreach into the subnational senates, will have the facilities available to manage these rare diseases appropriately?
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Lord Walton of Detchant
My Lords, I warmly support this group of amendments, so ably proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Willis. The questions which he has posed to the Minister are of considerable importance. I do not propose to repeat them, but I look forward to hearing the answers.
In my professional lifetime, there is no doubt at all that research has transformed the practice of medicine. Research is the lifeblood of medicine. After all, antibiotics have been effective in depleting very many of the infectious diseases which I knew as a young doctor. Programmes of vaccination and inoculation have been successful in banishing smallpox from the world and, in the near future, it is probable that poliomyelitis will become a disease of yesterday as well—it is likely that there will be no such cases in the world in future. The conditions of childhood which so ravished children when I was a young doctor, such as diphtheria, scarlet fever and, to an extent, measles and German measles have been successfully controlled by vaccination. In particular, in relation to rubella or German measles, that programme has prevented the birth of children with many birth defects which resulted from infection with that virus in pregnant women.
There is no doubt, too, that the developments in diagnostic techniques, imaging, computerised tomography and other techniques, such as magnetic resonance imaging and so on, have transformed diagnosis. So, too, have many other techniques which have been introduced into medicine in the course of the last few years. Now, many painful and devastating operations have been prevented by interventional radiology, whereby under X-ray control, for example, in people with heart disease the passage of catheters into the coronary arteries can deal with that disease, even though in some cases there is a need for open-heart surgery. I could go on: there is hip replacement and joint replacement of all kinds, or the use of steroids in the management of autoimmune diseases. These have transformed the progress of medicine and, as the noble Lord, Lord Willis, said, today's discovery in basic medical science brings tomorrow's development in patient care. This is a lesson which we all have to recognise. That is called translational research; you translate the result of the basic research in the laboratory, or basic clinical research, into effective treatment of disease.
All of these things are happening all around us and, as the noble Lord, Lord Willis, said, the evidence is clear that when one looks at research citations and publications in learned journals, for instance, there are many more published in the United States but, if you translate those citations according to population this country, the United Kingdom, in its research productivity in the field of medicine, stands the highest in the world. Yet obstacles and problems which have been encountered over the years have to be overcome.
Fifteen years ago, on behalf of your Lordships’ Select Committee on Science and Technology, I chaired a sub-committee inquiry into research in the NHS. From its very beginning, the National Health Service provided limited funds for research purposes and there was a locally operated clinical research scheme. It was helpful in that it helped many young doctors and medical scientists to take their first steps in research by receiving small grants to help them to conduct such investigations, but the actual amount of money expended in that way and the results of this research were very limited.
Lord Walton of Detchant
My Lords, I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Willis, has raised this extremely important matter. Research misconduct is rare, but it happens. Several years ago, there were a number of quite cogent reports produced by Dr Frank Wells of the British Medical Association, Dr Stephen Lock, who was the editor of the British Medical Journal and his successor, Dr Richard Smith, which actually demonstrated that in a number of rare cases research results had been fabricated. This issue has been highlighted by a number of similar events in the United States and elsewhere. The universities, the research councils and a number of other bodies have looked at this matter and made a number of recommendations. I am not at all certain that this is the right place in this Bill for this issue to be raised, but the question needs further consideration by the Government—for instance, to decide whether this important issue should be in any way part of the remit of the proposed new medical research agency.
Baroness Thornton
The noble Lord raised a very interesting and important point, but I do not intend to delay the House by expanding on it.