NHS: Seven-day Working

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Monday 8th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

My Lords, certainly we are looking at all those ideas, and we will gather together all the data that we need before we go forward. But I feel that I should say that there are indicators for this service that cannot be measured, and one of them is quality of life. As a former nurse, at the forefront of my mind was always the question of whether my patient was getting the best care from me, from the specialist and from the hospital. In my book, a seven-day service goes towards achieving that goal.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

Is the Minister perhaps being just a little complacent about just how difficult things are? In the small ex-mining town where I live, in the north-east of England, I discovered on Friday that the GP practice that normally has seven to eight doctors now has three, two of whom are salaried. They are simply not able to offer any decent service, let alone a seven-day-a-week service, to patients in that small town and the surrounding villages. Does the Government not recognise that the model is broken and that they have to be far more urgent in addressing the issues that millions of people in this country face and that undermine confidence in the NHS?

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

My Lords, I think that the answer that I gave before about the GP access fund answers what my noble friend was saying. As we know, the Government are committed to ensuring that everyone can get the care that they need, seven days a week. Seven-day services are backed by senior clinicians, who recognise the vast improvement in patient care that can be achieved. We know that it reduces patient mortality. Expanding services to seven days a week has the potential to improve the patient experience, reduce the length of stay and chance of readmission and make better use of expensive resources such as staff and equipment.