Health: Birth Defects

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Wednesday 18th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, mandatory fortification of food is, by any standards, a big step; it is not a decision to be taken lightly. The issue that we have been facing is that the survey data used by the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition is more than 10 years old. The latest data available on the folate status of the population will be available early next year, and we feel that it is prudent to use that information to assess the risks and benefits of fortifying flour with folic acid before we make our decision.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, international academic research since 2005 has shown that including folic acid in bread and cereal products is important and that it reduces neural tube defects by between a quarter and a half, so it undoubtedly helps raise the levels of folic acid in women before and during pregnancy. However, it is not at the level that would remove all possibility of NTDs. Research says that folic acid supplements are recommended, too. What will the Government do to alert women who are thinking about having a baby to take supplements before becoming pregnant?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, we recognise that some women do not always access maternity services early or attend regularly for antenatal care, and that poorer outcomes are therefore reported in some cases for mother and baby. Maternity services need to be proactive in engaging all women. To help reduce variation and improve services, NICE has published a comprehensive suite of evidence-based clinical guidelines and quality standards for maternity services. We are also promoting the taking of folic acid supplements through a number of channels including Healthy Start, NHS Choices, Start4Life, and the Information Service for Parents.

G8 Summit on Dementia

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Tuesday 17th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

The noble Lord is absolutely right, but he will recall that the question yesterday dealt with the WISH summit, which was focused specifically on mental health and not on dementia. I did not mean to imply that there should be any less emphasis on tackling stigma in both areas.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, welcome the result of the G8 dementia summit, but what progress is being made in appointing nurses who specialise in dementia in the same way that there are nurse specialists for cancer, rheumatology and epilepsy? Dementia UK’s admiral nurses are wonderful and provide real help to patients and families, but there are a mere 103 for an estimated population of 800,000 dementia patients.

[Earl Howe]

My noble friend raises a very important point. I come back to the point that I made a short while ago: people with dementia in practice access all parts of the health and care system. We want all staff who care for people with dementia to be trained to the level of their engagement so as to deliver high-quality care for people with dementia. I mentioned that dementia training was a key part of Health Education England’s mandate. Already, 100,000 NHS staff have received dementia training. As my noble friend will know, decisions on the commissioning of admiral nurses are made locally, but I recognise the work that they do.

NHS: Walk-in Centres

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Tuesday 10th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, when any service change is proposed, we expect that the four tests which the Government laid down early on in their term of office should be followed. One of those is a patient and public consultation or involvement in the decision. Another is clinical buy-in. I can give the noble Baroness the assurance that this is what local area teams of NHS England would expect to see in any proposals involving the closure of a walk-in centre.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, does my noble friend share my concern that the NHS is paying twice for patients who regularly use walk-in centres due to the capitation payment to GPs and activity payment to other care systems? Could part of the alternative provision to closed walk-in centres be that all GP practices follow the good practice of those who already extend opening hours for early and late sessions and Saturdays?

[Earl Howe]

The noble Baroness makes an extremely good point. One of the findings of the Monitor review was that, when responsibility for walk-in centres was handed down to local commissioners in 2007, many of them were decommissioned because they were duplicating services locally and GPs felt that they were paying twice for the same thing. I am sure that the ideas the noble Baroness has put forward will have a resonance in many areas.

Health and Social Care Act 2012: Risk Register

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Wednesday 4th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, the Government are fully committed to transparency and openness, but they need also to be able to manage large and complex projects and programmes efficiently and effectively. If requests for information are made that threaten to compromise their ability to do that, as is the case here, then the Government have to weigh up whether releasing what is being asked for is, on balance and bearing in mind the consequences, in the public interest. Up to now, we have taken the view that the public interest is not served by publication.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, the previous Government refused to release Department of Health strategic risk registers in response to three requests under the Freedom of Information Act. Can my noble friend the Minister tell the House whether there is a discernible difference between this Government and the previous one in their approach to the publishing of risk registers?

Health: Tuberculosis

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Thursday 21st November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, as the noble Lord is aware, NHS England allocates funding to clinical commissioning groups which commission health services on behalf of their local populations. It is for CCGs to decide how best to use the funding that is allocated to them, underpinned by clinical insight and knowledge of local healthcare needs. We expect health and well-being boards to have a major say in those areas where TB is commonplace.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

One of the key strands of the directly observed therapy recommended by the World Health Organisation for TB is standard treatment with supervision and patient support. What steps are being taken to empower patients with TB so that they can support DOT? Is there an expert patients scheme, as there is with many other chronic illnesses?

Children and Families Bill

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Wednesday 20th November 2013 Grand Committee

I know that the Minister is reasonable, I have a suspicion that he would have the support of the Prime Minister and I am pretty confident that he would have the support of his coalition partners. I look forward to his response and I beg to move.

[Baroness Brinton]

My Lords, it cannot be right that it is a complete lottery for a grieving parent, probably in deep shock, in being entirely reliant on the good will of their employer. I shall give a slightly different example from the one given just now by the noble Lord, Lord Knight, and focus on an extended illness of a child. Jane, a junior manager whom I know, had a three year-old with leukaemia. The charity she worked for believed itself to be a caring and reasonable organisation, but the head of the charity objected to allowing further compassionate leave as the child was dying or when the child died, nor did they want to give leave to prepare for the funeral. They said that the parent should take unpaid leave, having used up her annual leave to be with her child in hospital earlier in the year.

It took a little while for this charity to be persuaded that this was not the appropriate course and, some years on, as a result of the organisation changing its view, the junior manager, Jane, is still there. She found support from friends and colleagues absolutely vital, both in the time immediately after the bereavement and later when she returned to work. What the family really needed after the death was time—time to prepare for the funeral, time to help other children in the family to understand and time to prepare for a return to an ordinary working life after such an extraordinary event.

I think, despite the story, that this manager was lucky. At the very least we need guidelines for employers, but I have sympathy with the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Knight. As he has outlined, the costs are not too great either. Fortunately, losing a child is rare, so neither employers nor the Exchequer need worry that this will be a great cost. Also, as important as the humanitarian and caring approach is, parental bereavement leave is likely to help parents settle back into work, which in the long run will help both their employer and the state.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, it is very difficult to follow the well presented case that has been made for action in this area, but I want to spend two seconds paying tribute to Lucy Herd, who is in the audience today. I was privileged to accompany her when she came to see the Minister and the Bill team and very bravely went through some of the things that had happened to her in her life and how she had coped with them. One wonders whether people really can dig so deep, and yet that is what she did; she turned the tragedy of the death of her deeply loved son, Jack, into a campaign that she is still waging and which we have heard about from my noble friend Lord Knight.

This situation cannot be right. We need to do better than we currently do as a society that says it cares about these sorts of issues. There is clearly a cost, but there are also other things that could be done at least to open the situation for discussion. If this happens to you or to your nearest and dearest, you should not then find during the trauma of what is happening that the rules are so adverse and difficult that you do not know where you stand in terms of your relationship to your employer or to anyone else or their agencies. Given the complications of what would happen and the timescales involved—because if there are inquests and other things they will span over a long period—this situation is clearly unstable and has to be resolved. I hope that the Minister will be able to help us

NHS: Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Tuesday 19th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, we on these Benches welcome both the Francis report and the Government’s Statement. In particular, we welcome the importance of openness, transparency and access to information to ensure that there is a change in culture. Can the Minister confirm that the new care certificate will be an NVQ qualification so that the public can be confident that staff have the right skills and training? We would also welcome registration and regulation for those staff in the way that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, referred to earlier. Can the Minister also confirm that when complaints and other items have to be published, it will not be as a few lines in an annual report but on the web, and that it will easily accessible by patients and the public?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I very much agree with the spirit of my noble friend’s questions. Certainly as regards complaints, the public should have a clear view of the nature of the complaints that have been registered with a particular organisation. They should be able to have a sense of what those complaints relate to and what action the organisation has taken to address the matter in question.

On my noble friend’s first point, we are currently working through the question of the care certificate and will seek advice. It is important to arrive at an agreed formula that gives the maximum assurance, both to care assistants and to those they look after, that basic standards of training have been learnt and are being adhered to. It is important to define as closely as we can what we mean by that, and as soon as we have further details we will announce them.

NHS: Urgent and Emergency Care Review

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

We have been clear with Health Education England that this is not just about A&E consultants; it is about the entire workforce in A&E, including all relevant disciplines—nursing and others. We have tasked Health Education England with putting even greater emphasis on the need to recruit A&E consultants from medical students over the coming years.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

I know that my noble friend the Minister cannot comment on Sir Bruce Keogh’s review but I wondered, separately, if there was evidence in areas that have already reorganised their urgent and emergency care—such as the West Hertfordshire Hospitals NHS Trust, which reorganised in 2009—that services are performing well or indeed better than under the old arrangements.

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I do not have that evidence in front of me but, where there is a case for change, the local NHS has to agree a number of measures to be effective before any changes to services take place. That will include ensuring additional capacity at neighbouring hospitals, where that is appropriate, or in the community, where that is appropriate. If CCGs can properly satisfy themselves that a case for change can provide safe, effective and sustainable services, that is a legitimate justification for moving forward with local proposals.

NHS: Clinical Commissioning Groups’ Funding of Treatment

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, the system is very clear. If NICE recommends under its technology appraisal that a drug should be made available, the funding will automatically follow.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a patient with rheumatoid arthritis who is on a biologic. What data are available to show whether CCGs follow NICE guidelines for the use of biologics and how long does it take for permission to be granted? I talked to rheumatologists last week at the National Rheumatoid Arthritis Society awards ceremony and I was told that there is increasing evidence that CCGs delay treatment for those on biologics. Is there a case for moving chronic illnesses such as RA to NHS England rather than relying on the lottery of CCGs?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, the list of conditions for which treatment is directly commissioned by NHS England is reviewed regularly. On the particular question my noble friend asked about transparency, as part of Innovation Health and Wealth the innovation scorecard is now showing up the variations in prescribing rates between different clinical commissioning groups. We expect this information to be extremely informative as regards the decisions taken by commissioners.

Health: Cancer

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Monday 20th May 2013 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My noble friend raises a very important issue. I agree that it is important to draw together as much information as we can about causes of death from across the country. However, I am advised that the question of whether a cancer-related death can be attributed to the underlying disease or to the treatment cannot be answered comprehensively from information collected as part of the death certification process or the cancer registration process or, indeed, a combination of both. However, as I hope my previous answer indicated, I am sure that this is a developing science.

[Baroness Brinton]

My Lords, the Minister has kindly explained the tracking of the causes of death. What advice is given to doctors about recording dementia, which is often excluded when somebody has died of cancer? In the case of my late father, it was possible to get it added, but I suspect it may also be one of the reasons why dementia is underrecorded in this country.

[Earl Howe]

My noble friend asks a very good question. I will write to her on the specific question of dementia. I understand that the completed medical certificate of cause of death is given to the bereaved family which will present it to the registration service to register the death. The registrar will check that the doctor has completed the certificate fully, so it could then be open to the family to question anything that is not quite right on the certificate.