Health and Social Care Bill Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateLord Warner
Main Page: Lord Warner (Crossbench - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Warner's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(12 years, 8 months ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, we return to the issue of adult social care, which is a good occasion for seeing a massive emptying of the Chamber. In very simple terms, the amendment is an attempt to get the Bill to live up to its title and become a genuine health and social care Bill.
Subsection (1) of the proposed new clause would place a clear duty on the Secretary of State to secure improvement in the quality of adult social care through the offices of local government and qualified service providers. It would make the Health Secretary pay proper attention to adult social care in a similar way to the way in which he is under a duty to ensure a comprehensive health service under other provisions in the legislation.
Subsection (2) of the proposed new clause identifies the key elements that the Secretary of State must pay attention to in discharging the duty in subsection (1). These are: adequate funding for safe and sustainable services; access to services for those of limited means; a cap on the financial liability of those with high lifetime care costs; and minimising the impact on the demand for health services. It also introduces national eligibility criteria for services across England and standard charging policies. That was argued for overwhelmingly in the evidence to the Dilnot commission, of which I was a member. In subsection (2)(c), a further push is given to the integration of health and social care in line with the recent report on social care by the Health Select Committee in the Commons.
What is to argue against in these provisions? Today, we see a lobby of Parliament by the Care and Support Alliance to secure action on delivering a more sustainable adult social care system instead of the underfunded and unsustainable system that we have now. This alliance is overwhelmingly in favour of implementing the framework in the Dilnot commission report in order to deliver a resilient and sustainable financial framework for adult social care. There is legitimate room for debate on the precise details of that framework, especially the level of the cap proposed by Dilnot. I for one would accept that we should start with a higher cap than the commission’s preferred option of £35,000, but there is nothing in this amendment that limits the Government’s freedom of manoeuvre on these details or on the speed of implementation. Nor does it frustrate the achievement of cross-party agreement in the cross-party talks now taking place. However, I see little evidence of those talks progressing very fast, with an isolated and politically wounded Health Secretary lacking any Whitehall-wide support, especially from the Chancellor, for doing a deal with the Opposition.
The amendment would get the Government out of a jam. They can implement Dilnot and anything else that they want to propose in their forthcoming White Paper without a new Bill next Session. Subsection (3) of the amendment would give broad powers to use affirmative regulations after appropriate consultation. I can see that after the failure of the Government to provide a convincing political narrative on this current Bill, the Prime Minister might not want to launch another Bill from Richmond House in the next Session. Therefore, ever sensitive to these political considerations, I offer him an exit strategy without neglecting the serious needs of adult social care and the people who need those services.
We all agree that the funding of adult social care is in a parlous state; there is broad stakeholder support for the Dilnot-proposed framework. We all recognise the dependence of the NHS on a robust adult social care system, without which the NHS will surely fail to deliver the efficiency gains required of it. We all want to see improved integration of health and social care, although the Government’s opposition to my amendment on integration last week was disappointing, especially the conduct of 17 Liberal Democrats who voted against it. However, I say to Lib Dem colleagues that today is your chance to make amends. If you want to go to your spring conference trumpeting your success in saving the NHS, you will support the amendment. You had the courage to insert in the coalition agreement the establishment of an independent commission. I pay great tribute to you for doing that. Now have the courage to put into this Health and Social Care Bill the means to implement the adult social care changes that are so badly needed.
I have low expectations of the Minister being willing to accept the amendment because I suspect that his hands are tied by those in a higher pay grade. However, if he is willing to take this amendment away and come back at Third Reading with something equivalent, I will not press matters today. If he is not, we owe it to the outside world, especially the stakeholders lobbying Parliament today, to show where people stand on tackling the crisis in adult social care and protecting the many vulnerable people affected by that crisis. I beg to move.
The noble Baroness may not have been following all our debates as closely as some, given that we have extensively debated integrating health and social care and how the Bill will improve the prospects of that. I therefore do not agree that social care is such a poor relation in the Bill. She is quite right; of course its prime focus is health, but we have not completely neglected the subject that is so close to her heart.
Specific legislation on social care will be the most appropriate vehicle for debating these critical matters and achieving lasting reform. Of course I understand the desire of the noble Lord, Lord Warner, to keep social care at the top of the political agenda. That is greatly to his credit. I can assure him that the Government have not lost sight of this. We share the same aims for a high-quality service, but it would be wrong to legislate now in such a selective way. The noble Lord may suppose that this is just another instance of a Minister following the standard line that says “resist”, but I hope he will accept that that is not so. There are genuine reasons why the amendment is a bad idea, and I hope that he will feel able to withdraw it.
Having said that, I look forward to debating these issues with him further in due course, and to benefiting from the insight that he and others bring to this topic.
My Lords, this is an interesting debate. Let me say to the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, that I am not having the House on. I am deadly serious about this because when the Dilnot commission was set up we were asked to do a job extremely rapidly, and we did so well within the 12 months we were set. We were asked to do that so that the Government could crack on with change, which is absolutely vital. This service—adult social care—is in a parlous state that will also do enormous damage to the NHS. Unless you do something quickly about adult social care, you will cause the most terrible financial crisis in the NHS. That is what the demography tells us. That is the reality for urgent admissions to acute hospitals and people staying there much longer than they need to.
If you are interested in improving and safeguarding the NHS, you should be interested in rapidly moving on with the reform of adult social care. The Government are already behind time on this reform. I do not blame the noble Earl, but we were expecting faster action, as was the Dilnot commission. Spring could come quite late this year in terms of the White Paper appearing, and we have no guarantee that there will be legislation in the next Session. The noble Earl has stuck to the normal line, for which I do not criticise him, that one can give no assurances about the next Session’s legislation, but one has to be an extreme optimist to believe that a collective Government will want to have another go at this territory in the next parliamentary Session. I do not doubt his good will—I am grateful for the kind words he said about me—nor his real confidence that the Government will press on with that, but there are a lot of people out there, not just in front of Parliament today, who think that the Government need to go faster on this issue.
I have listened very carefully. The amendment does not prevent the Government from bringing forward new legislation in the next Session. If they want to do that, I shall be deeply delighted and they will have my support. I see nothing in the amendment that prevents the Government from making a start on making changes and protects them to go further if they want to include such provision in the next legislative programme.
I think we should make sure that adult social care is properly represented and recognised in the Bill. Therefore, I wish to test the opinion of the House.
I speak to Amendment 164 in my name, which is in this group. It returns to the issue I raised in Committee: the need for Monitor to produce an early report on the barriers to entry for new providers of services to the NHS. Although he had sympathy with what I was trying to do, the Minister did not like my previous amendment, which would have required Monitor to produce a report within 12 months of Royal Assent on barriers to NHS entry to new providers. I think that he accepts that there are barriers to entry for new providers which we need to tackle. In this amendment, I have added the words “identifying and” to the requirement in Clause 61(3) for Monitor to prevent anti-competitive behaviour.
I recognise that many people in this House and in the Commons do not share my view on the virtues of competition when used selectively for patient benefit. I will not go over all the ground again, but I think there is good evidence—the noble Earl cited some of it in an earlier discussion—that that has proved beneficial to patients. Moreover, the UK is almost unique in large advanced healthcare systems in enshrining monopoly public providers of hospital services, with little challenge to their efficiency or effectiveness. These NHS monopolies have been very good at erecting barriers to entry for newcomers and ensuring—if I may put it as unkindly as this—a quiet life for monopoly incumbents.
We should be concerned about this. Only last week there were some startling statistics in the Health Service Journal about non-foundation trusts’ poor performance in achieving savings requirements in line with the Government’s targets. I have no problems with the Government setting those targets for non-foundation trusts to improve their efficiency. None the less, however we frame the competition provisions in this legislation, we have to face the fact that it is extremely difficult for new entrants to dislodge incumbents in many of these services where the performance is poor. That is why in my view Monitor should, after the Bill receives Royal Assent, quickly identify clearly existing barriers to entry so that they can be dismantled in the public interest. The Co-operation and Competition Panel has already identified some of the barriers for new entrants to the NHS market—and, again, I make no apology for talking about an NHS market. It is important that we see healthcare, in part, as a market where new providers can provide better services and different types of services more effectively.
I hope that the Government will look sympathetically at this modest amendment to try to get Monitor on the case of identifying barriers to entry.
My Lords, I have two amendments in this group, Amendments 163C and 166B, which also stand in the name of my noble friend Lord Marks. However, before I address those relatively short amendments, I should like to say a word or two about the broader issues that we have been discussing. I begin by perhaps giving a little comfort to the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, by saying that my understanding is that we will be discussing the whole issue of the relationship of Monitor to foundation trusts later in the proceedings. Our amendment on this matter, which is not far removed from hers, addresses an amendment to the government amendment on this issue, which itself comprises a considerable advance in the position that we have had up till now. I shall not try to get into that debate because it is complicated and I think that it would be better conducted a little later in the light of the various proposals.
I want to say a word about competition, and it is appropriate to do so given that the noble Lord, Lord Warner, has just been speaking. He has always spoken with some courage on this issue, which I recognise is not exactly popular with his party. However, I say quite directly that I feel very strongly that we have allowed the issue of competition to become quite different from the reality that we have encountered in the Bill, in this House and from the argument that is going on outside. That is because we have tried to treat competition as an absolute—either we have a competitive market for the National Health Service or we have no competition at all—and we all know that to be false.
We all know that there is a role for competition but the argument is about how limited it should be, what it should be addressed to and whether it is then balanced by, for example, equally strong duties in relation to co-operation, integration and the bringing together of services. I think we all recognise that competition can make a significant contribution in innovation and bringing in new ideas. For example, we have only to look at the recent developments in the treatment of stroke victims and victims of heart conditions to see that there has often been an innovatory role for the private sector. However, many of us also believe, as I certainly do, that the National Health Service should continue to be primarily a public service, that it should be available free of charge and that it should be accessible to all. Therefore, competition must exist but essentially it must be balanced by other considerations which, in the case of what we have been discussing recently, are clearly of great significance—particularly the role of the integration of services and the role of co-operation, which in terms of our main priorities, including the care of the elderly, are absolutely central and crucial.
My Lords, I support this amendment, which is in my name and those of the noble Lords, Lord Patel and Lord Warner. The noble Lord, Lord Patel, has introduced it with his customary elegance and clarity. I can see no reason why these amendments should not be made. Bearing in mind that the noble Earl was so generous to me earlier when we included HealthWatch in another amendment, I live in great hope.
My Lords, I, too, support this amendment. Since the noble Earl was so beastly to me over social care, I hope he will actually support this amendment.
My Lords, the government amendments are indeed welcome because they reflect concerns that have been expressed. I am sure that all those who expressed those concerns are grateful.
The amendments in my name in this group relate to education and training. I know that we have somewhat threaded education and training through the Bill at all stages. Amendment 192 relates to considering education and training when setting licence conditions, and I put “education and training” because in addition to education, staff training at every level is essential.
I hope that the Government will support the view that no organisation should be fit to provide services if it does not ensure that its staff are being kept up to date and if it is not providing an environment from which people can learn. This does not mean that they all have to be recognised educational providers.
Amendment 196 in this group relates to indemnity. This amendment has been tabled again because, despite the response that we were given in Committee, concerns continue over indemnity for patients. Should a patient develop a problem subsequent to a provider going out of business, they should be covered by indemnity. It is interesting that we have the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill in parallel with this Bill. We have concerns over legal aid for medical negligence. I have attached my name to amendments to that Bill concerning legal aid for the victims of clinical negligence.
I hope that the Government will see that there is a need to have indemnity within services, whoever the licensed provider is. There should be a read across to the protection of patients in the event of something going wrong or being done wrong that has harmed them, particularly if they have been harmed in such a way as to incur ongoing costs for healthcare and social care as a result of the problem that arose with the provider, whether it be a voluntary sector provider or a private provider.
My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment 214G which stands in my name. The amendments arise from our debate in Committee about what we then described as a “pre-failure regime”. The argument that I was trying to sustain, with helpful support from different parts of the Committee, was that it would be better for Monitor to get engaged when it could see failure coming at it down the track rather than waiting for the train crash to occur and use the health special administration procedures that were provided for in the Bill.
My amendment then was probably technically defective but it served the purpose of raising the issue. The Minister was not so off-putting that I thought that I would not have another go at this, so, with the help of the noble Lord, Lord Patel, and the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby, I put down Amendment 217, which is in this group. Following that, the Minister engaged with me in some rather helpful and fruitful discussions and the results of those discussions were Amendments 196ZA and 214G. In my enthusiasm for tabling these amendments I completely forgot to remove Amendment 217, which is why it is still on the Marshalled List. I assure the Minister that I have no intention whatever of moving Amendment 217.
The nub of what is in Amendment 196ZA is that it provides for Monitor when it can see that a licence holder’s conditions are likely to be imperilled by a current configuration of health services in the wider health economy—not just within that licence holder’s own individual trust. It can draw the attention of commissioners—the national Commissioning Board and clinical commissioning groups—to those risks which it can foresee and it has to give its reasons for doing so. But rightly in my view and, I believe, that of the Government, it puts the onus on the commissioners to do something about it. It does not require a top-down intervention, but it flags up very seriously to the commissioners that a problem is looming and they need to do something about it. Just to give more force to that, each financial year Monitor will publish a list of the notifications that it has issued in that financial year, putting commissioners on notice that they have a problem, that they need to do something about the reconfiguration of services and that they need to take some action to ensure that there are sustainable NHS services in that part of the country.
I pay tribute to the civil servants at the Department of Health because they have done something rather ingenious that I never even thought of in Amendment 214G, which is to take an application by a service provider to Monitor to secure some adjustment in the price paid for particular services to make Monitor think about whether there is anything more significant behind that application and whether there is a risk to the sustainability of services in a particular area. If it does consider that that is necessary, it can again notify the commissioners of its concerns about the need to consider service reconfiguration in that area.
These two amendments, which have been given a lot of technical help by the Department of Health and a lot of support from the Minister, meet my concerns and, having talked briefly to the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby, I believe that they also meet hers. There is an adequate set of arrangements to put commissioners on notice that failure may be looming so that they can take action under their responsibilities. Just to make sure that they do, each year there will be a list of the notifications that Monitor has issued so that it is on the public record that Monitor has spotted that there is something of concern and has required commissioners to take action.
That meets my concerns and I think that it meets the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby and the noble Lord, Lord Patel. In order to table the amendment in time for today’s debate, I did not have time to collect the signatures of my partners in crime on Amendment 217, but I have every reason to believe that they would be satisfied with the Government’s response to our concerns.
With regard to subsection (5) of Amendment 217, which I have mentioned to the Minister, I think it would be a good idea if the Government were to consider assembling a group with expertise to help local people to reconfigure their services. It is often difficult for people at the local level to think through how they might reconfigure services to make them sustainable. I do not suggest a top-down approach but some sort of panel that could help local people and facilitate the reshaping and redesign of services. That would be a helpful way of proceeding. It might help a lot of people to get through the difficult task of reshaping services when the need arises. Without further ado, I beg to move.
My Lords, my intervention will be extremely short. I am delighted that the noble Lords, Lord Warner and Lord Patel, put down this proposal for what one might describe as precautionary failure. We were very concerned that there might be no regime that would enable services to continue because one had seen in advance the possibility of a particular place getting into a great deal of trouble. This is a very satisfactory proposal to put before the Government to deal with the continuation of health services for an area, even when those services get into difficulties.
I also strongly commend the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Warner, about the small group of local people. That has one great advantage: that small group will then become part of what one might describe as a lobby for a sensible outcome, for a proper reconfiguration or change in the structure of services. That is very important. Otherwise, you almost invariably get very powerful local opposition to any substantial change and no natural constituency of people who support it. This is an imaginative idea. I am pleased to be associated with the amendment of the noble Lords, Lord Warner and Lord Patel.
My Lords, I support my noble friend’s Amendment 201D and I do so for a few simple reasons. I am afraid that I am a bit of a heretic on price competition. It has always seemed to me that, if you want to have competition, simply excluding all aspects of price will not necessarily be in the best interests of any public service, health or otherwise. Therefore, I do not start from the position where I think that a blanket refusal to have any competition on price is a sensible way forward. However, that is not what my noble friend’s amendment does. It is, if I may say so, uncharacteristically modest in its approach.
Although I shall not name the person or the circumstances, I should like to share with the House a recent discussion that I had with an innovative GP running a big group practice in something which looks remarkably like an Ara Darzi polyclinic. This practice is innovating the way that it responds to its patients’ needs and it is doing so by providing services without reference to an acute hospital. However, it is caught in a bind. It is making substantial surpluses, about which it is almost embarrassed, simply because it is required by its commissioners to accept the tariff payments. That is a nonsense in the circumstances in which the NHS finds itself, and I am certainly prepared to talk to the Minister privately about some of those circumstances. I am not fabricating this; it is a real case happening day in and day out. I suspect that, on the basis of what I was told, it is not alone in the country in being in that position.
If one thinks about it, this is bound to happen. If we are really serious about driving services outside hospitals and providing them in a facility where a lot of the things that would be done in hospitals can be done on a more out-patient basis but without reference to any in-patient costs, it is likely that we will get ourselves into difficulty with a tariff which at the moment is very hospital-driven. It is a tariff which is set on a basis of acute hospital costs. For a few years, we are likely to throw money at innovators who do not necessarily want that volume of money simply because we have ruled out the ability to pay below tariff, so that people can provide perfectly adequate, perfectly good services for their patients, protecting their interests, but they will actually be paid more than they need to be paid for providing those good quality services. I think that the Government have to look again at this issue. My noble friend has produced a way forward with many safeguards.
Perhaps I could also say a few words about the Secretary of State setting prices. I do so from my experience as the Minister who was involved in the first sets of price setting, when we introduced them across the country back in 2005 and 2006. In those circumstances, one of the places where we looked for experience was Germany. Germany has a separate organisation which sets the prices and collects and analyses the data. That happened because it was thought that there was a lack of trust in Ministers setting the prices. We got a fair amount of criticism in the beginning from the NHS about the price setting not being transparent. At that point, once we had established the tariff system—the payment-by-result system—we were inclined to move the setting of the price away from the Department of Health so that there would be more confidence in the process of setting prices.
In so far as there is a case for the Secretary of State to be involved, it seems to me that the case is stronger, not in relation to Monitor’s pricing, but in terms of the Secretary of State driving the change in the definition of currencies, which is the function that has been given to the national Commissioning Board. Making changes in the currencies is probably the most significant way in which we can improve the way that the tariff operates. I do not have any particular problem with that being with the national Commissioning Board now, but it is certainly an area where I think the Secretary of State will need to keep a close eye on the national Commissioning Board to see that it addresses the need to move away from episodes of care to patient pathways in the way in which the tariff is set.
I am not so sure that I agree with my noble friend on the Front Bench that we want the Secretary of State to set a price, but I think that the Secretary of State should take a healthy interest in the way in which the currencies are set with the tariff.
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Warner, has said more or less what I was going to say. It seems to me that if you remove price setting from the regulator of healthcare, you do not have an economic regulator. From my experience of watching prices and types of funding formula go up and down over the past 20 or 30 years, it is crucial and admirable to remove it into a system that can be independent and transparent.
As the noble Lord, Lord Warner, says, after the Future Forum amendments, we have a system now whereby the shape of the tariff and the bundling systems, if you like, which will enable the sort of integration and co-ordinated care to be effective, will be firmly with the national Commissioning Board, and Monitor will respond to those design structures. I think that working together will be very healthy indeed. I do not underestimate the difficulties of getting it right; it is an ongoing developmental programme. Nevertheless, I think it is a good way forward. I do not like the idea of removing the price setting from Monitor.
I will briefly say that I am quite attracted to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Davies. One cannot not be if one wants value for money. I remember seeing the noble Lord’s face when he first realised that there was going to be no competition on price, and having a good deal of sympathy for where he was coming from. However, the matter is one of transition, and of when the public will feel confident that the way that the Bill intends to introduce competition on the basis of competitive tender will improve quality.
I worry about the response that the media could make to a significant change of this kind, even though I agree with the noble Lord that some services—as the noble Lord, Lord Warner, said—are overpriced and that there are opportunities for driving down these prices. That may come through the way that the national Commissioning Board and the regulator together set prices. After all, the price of a tariff will be a moving thing; it will be negotiated; it will change over time; and we will be able to address areas where there is obvious overpricing. I am attracted to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Davies, and it may be that eventually we will need to introduce something of the sort. However, I would be nervous of doing it at the moment in this form, even though it seems quite sensible.