Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top and Baroness Hollins

Monday 7th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top]

My Lords, I seek only to intervene briefly on this. The whole issue of how to tackle inequalities in health is an extremely complex and difficult one. When I was a Member of Parliament, I looked forward to receiving from the department reports on a regular basis on how inequalities had been addressed and how health had improved throughout the constituency. What was clear was that the more effective our public health interventions were, such as on reducing smoking, the more difficult it was to tackle inequalities. The people who automatically responded best to those interventions were those on higher wages, with better qualifications and who were likely to be in higher class groups than those in the poorest parts of the constituency. That could always be seen clearly in those reports. The amendments that support better information are very important because clinical commissioning groups in particular are not well placed instinctively to tackle inequalities. It is generally not part of the training of GPs to look at these issues and work out how to address them.

We have already discussed the second issue today, and it is important—the issue of access. Unless we open up access much more sharply to the disadvantaged we will not have a chance of addressing inequalities. The noble Baroness opposite talked about homelessness. I have discussed this issue with the Minister on a number of occasions, and I am not content that the Bill deals with it adequately. It is not fair to ask clinical commissioning groups to address this issue. Sometimes they will simply be too small to do so. Also, homeless people tend to be fairly mobile, so in London they will cross authority areas. From my experience in the north-east of England, a single PCT—or what will now be the smaller clinical commissioning groups—does not have the people available properly to offer the sort of services that are needed to open up access effectively to those who are not normally registered on a GP list.

I am also concerned that clinical commissioning groups may be responsible for areas with poor GP coverage and there will be a need to bring in salaried GPs. It will need someone other than a clinical commissioning group to address the issue of GP shortages—and it is always the poorest areas which have the poorest access to GPs. It is an issue that continues to have to be addressed time and time again. I was pleased when the last Government introduced many more salaried GPs, but we have to keep on top of that agenda.

I also support the amendments that look to the responsibilities of the NHS Commissioning Board. There will be occasions when the board has to come in specifically to address inequalities in a range of ways. I am not sure that it is really geared up to do that at the moment. But because I certainly do think that clinical commissioning groups are not going to be able to do this on their own, and indeed it would not be appropriate for them to address some areas of clinical commissioning, it is very important that the department, the Secretary of State and the Commissioning Board think about how they are going to do this effectively.

[Baroness Hollins]

My Lords, I particularly welcome the amendments which are designed to strengthen the duty to reduce health inequalities between people and communities, the emphasis here being on inequalities not between “the people of England”, but between individuals as well as groups. I draw attention to this because in 2008 the Department of Health drew up a policy on health inequalities, and I sat on the group which developed it. I was pleased when the document was published in June 2008 because it talked about the group that I am interested in, which is people with learning disabilities. I shall read out a short paragraph from the executive summary because it makes my point very nicely:

“Progress on health inequalities will be judged against how public services treat especially vulnerable groups. The recent Disability Rights Commission report made it clear that people with learning disabilities often receive a poorer level and quality of service from the NHS. If services and health outcomes are improving for people with learning disabilities, they are likely to be improving for other groups at risk of health inequalities”.

The report goes into some detail about the importance of measuring the improvement in health inequalities for particularly vulnerable groups. That is a good measure to measure progress in the NHS.