Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between Lord Walton of Detchant and Lord Ribeiro

Monday 7th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Walton of Detchant]

My Lords, 53 years ago, after seven years in full-time clinical research followed by 18 months as a first assistant in a neurological department with an honorary senior registrar contract, at the age of 35 I was appointed as a consultant in the NHS. But since at the time I had not even reached a salary of £2,000 a year, on being appointed as a consultant I chose to take a maximum part-time contract to do limited private practice, if only for financial reasons. In fact, it was a very interesting experience. I did this only for a few years before I became a full-time academic.

At that time every NHS hospital had a private ward or had the opportunity, as was the case in the regional neurological centre in Newcastle Upon Tyne, such that on my ward of 28 beds I was entitled, if I so wished, to use four single rooms for private patients. The advantage of that arrangement, which was widespread throughout the country, was that the consultants working in that kind of hospital had the right to be geographically whole-time at the hospital. They were not being diverted away to distant private hospitals. They could look after their patients, both private and public, on the same ward and give them equal standards of care. The only real advantage for the private patients was that they had single rooms.

Many years later, along came Barbara Castle, who was the Secretary of State for Health and who later became the much respected Lady Castle. By that time I was a full-time academic with no private practice. I took private patients under my care into hospital, as I had to do if they came from overseas. In order to take advantage of the research facilities in my department, they had to be treated as private patients. However, under pressure from the trade unions, the Government worked through a process of gradually removing private patient beds from NHS hospitals so that, in the end, in the three major hospitals in Newcastle Upon Tyne we had one private bed in each hospital. The result was that, as an academic with major research facilities for the investigation of neuromuscular disease, I had to refuse patients referred to me from the United States, Canada, Australia and elsewhere because there were no private hospitals which could provide the facilities needed for the investigation of these patients, and there were no private beds into which they could be admitted. I look back on the period before that, when there were private beds in NHS hospitals, with great interest. I think that it was an excellent arrangement.

This is why I strongly support the proposal that the cap on private patient beds in NHS hospitals, foundation trusts and so on be removed, but I agree that there should be a restriction so that the opportunity for such beds to be established for private patient care must not be excessive. However, the advantage is that the NHS will gain substantially from the income derived from those private beds. The noble Lord, Lord Phillips, has enunciated the principle that the standards of clinical care for public and private patients in those hospitals should be entirely comparable. The only advantage for private patients would be a better standard of accommodation, as Amendment 299B indicates, which is wholly acceptable. The quality of medical care should be identical. For that reason, I support the principle.

On the other hand, the wording of Amendment 30 is not satisfactory. Although I accept the principle of equal standards of clinical care, the amendment would make it impossible to provide the improved standards of accommodation to which Amendment 299B refers. The principle is important and I would support it in general, but the amendment needs a little adjustment.

[Lord Ribeiro]

My Lords, I agreed with everything that the noble Lord, Lord Walton of Detchant, said. His historical perspective reflects my own experience, both as a young trainee working at the Middlesex Hospital, where we had a separate private wing, and then post the decision made by Mrs Barbara Castle when the private wings lost their beds. The net result was that, when I became a consultant in 1979, there were very few private beds in my own hospital. I was a maximum part-time consultant as well. We saw a proliferation of new private hospitals in Brentwood—the Nuffield—Chelmsford and Southend; the whole area sprouted new private hospitals. I would see my private patients at the beginning of the day and then again at night while fulfilling my NHS commitment, which I am quite happy to say I did. I could travel 100 miles in a day seeing private patients, whereas previously those patients were in the same hospital. The junior doctors knew where the consultants were and if there was a problem on the ward they could consult them and bring them back.

There is another dimension to moving private beds out of the NHS, which is that I used to be able to take my trainees with me to the private hospital to assist me with my operations. That was a level of learning that they would often not have the opportunity to access, particularly if it was related to overseas patients with conditions that they had not previously seen. It was a learning opportunity which is now more or less lost. Junior trainees are very rarely able to escort their consultants to work in the private sector.

As to the private cap, it will not surprise your Lordships that two big hospitals in London, the Royal Marsden and Great Ormond Street, have a massive number of private patients who seek treatment from those hospitals because they are the best in the world. A cap in that situation is against the best interests of those hospitals. Robert Naylor, the chief executive of UCLH, has been quoted as saying that it is entirely transparent where the money from private patients treated in the NHS goes: back into supporting services within the NHS. Maintaining the cap on private earnings in the NHS will damage the NHS. Patients who come in to have their treatment privately in the NHS are treated by consultants who treat both NHS and private patients. There is no difference between the two. To deny those hospitals the opportunity of attracting patients from overseas and the benefits going back to the NHS would be a disservice.

I have looked at this amendment and, clearly, the intention is to ensure equality of care. I was watching the monitor upstairs in my office and heard the introduction to this debate. I am sorry that I was not here. The meaning behind the amendment is right. There should be equality. I am not sure whether it can be achieved in the way that has been described. The noble Lord was quite right in saying that the clinical treatment—this is not about food, beds or those sorts of facilities—that is provided should be the same.