Health and Care Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Tuesday 11th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I want to say a brief word in support of the amendment on innovation in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton.

Having just been the Minister for Innovation, I can tell noble Lords that they could fill their entire diary travelling the country and seeing fantastic innovation in the NHS up and down the country. Noble Lords could fill their Zoom calls speaking to countries around the world that look to the NHS for some of the best innovation and partner with it on innovative programmes. However, that innovation is often extremely isolated and rarely spread evenly across the whole country. In fact, I often thought that my job title should have been not Minister for Innovation but Minister for Adoption because my role should have been to take the best that the NHS does and spread it across the country more evenly. That is the objective of the Government’s health policy at the moment: to see a much more even spread of best practice right across the country.

Although we cannot legislate for culture, we can give signals to the system about what we think is important. I therefore think that the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, is on to something in suggesting this amendment. It should be given careful thought by the Minister.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise to offer Green support for all the amendments in this group. I will split them into two groups internally. First, I will speak to Amendments 6, 19, 60 and 215; I will then deal with Amendment 21 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Davies, separately.

All these amendments are about transparency and targets. When we look back to when targets were a particular focus—when the NHS was under the control of the party on these Benches—there were concerns that targets could sway provision and medical judgments. There was a concern that this was about the management of targets rather than the outcome for the patient. However, if we think of targets as foundations and basic standards that need to be met, it is really important that we ensure that there is enough funding for local priorities and concerns to be addressed to reach a higher level.

Amendment 215, which refers to an annual report, is particularly interesting; I know that it has full cross-party support. This is about people knowing what the NHS is achieving and, importantly, whether there is enough provision in it. Of course, your Lordships’ House is not in a position to demand that more money goes into the NHS; by constitutional norms, we cannot deal with spending. However, I think that we should frame this debate—this is my first contribution in Committee—by looking at the pre-Covid figures. The UK was spending £2,989 per person on healthcare; this was the second-lowest in the G7. France was spending £3,737; Germany, £4,432.

Of course, the great outlier in this is the US, spending £7,736 a year. It is worth noting that we seem to be chasing so much after the US healthcare model, which is so absolutely disastrous. Most of the amendments in this group are a way for your Lordships’ House to give the public the tools to say that we need to improve the resources of our NHS.