Baroness Brinton
Main Page: Baroness Brinton (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Lord Bethell
The noble Baroness asked about the statistics. The anecdotes put forward by the Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine and the president of the Paediatric Intensive Care Society are perfectly valid. They are reasonable stories. The question put was about whether NHS statistics are being falsified. These are very serious suggestions and questions. I reassure the House that the statistics put together by the NHS are blue-chip and very much ones that we are proud of.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, the Nuffield Trust report of December 2017, Admissions of inequality: emergency hospital use for children and young people, noted that children and young people from the most deprived areas are consistently more likely to go to A&E and need emergency hospital treatment. In fact, it specifically said that if unplanned admissions were at the level of the least deprived in the country, 244,000 fewer paediatric emergency hospital admissions would have been needed, saving the NHS £245 million. Given that the Health and Social Care Act 2012 makes reducing health inequalities in access and outcomes an explicit duty for the Secretary of State, can the Minister tell us exactly what the Secretary of State is planning to do to continue to lower this inequality?
Lord Bethell
The noble Baroness touches on an incredibly important point. Undoubtedly, accident and emergency services are suffering a big spike in attendance by children and young people. I travelled to 20 accident and emergency wards in December and saw for myself the long queues of children. Clearly, something needs to be done to guide children away from accident and emergency. That is why this Government are doing an enormous amount to improve primary care services by investing in the 111 service and treatment-in-a-day services, for example, which can move people from A&E to create space for those in the most need.