Health and Care Bill

Baroness Cumberlege Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 5th April 2022 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Cumberlege]

At end insert “, and do propose Amendment 29B in lieu—

29B: Clause 35, page 42, leave out lines 14 to 19 and insert—
The Secretary of State must, at least once every three years, lay a report before Parliament describing the system in place for assessing and meeting the workforce needs of the health, social care and public health services in England.
(2) This report must include—
(a) an independent assessment of health and social care workforce numbers, current at the time of publication, and the projected workforce supply for the following five, ten and 15 years, and
(b) an independent assessment of future health and social care workforce numbers based on the projected health and care needs of the population for the following five, ten and 15 years, taking account of the Office for Budget Responsibility long-term fiscal projections.
(3) NHS England and Health Education England must assist in the preparation of a report under this section.
(4) The organisations listed in subsection (3) must consult health and care employers, providers, trade unions, Royal Colleges, universities and any other persons deemed necessary for the preparation of this report, taking full account of workforce intelligence, evidence and plans provided by local organisations and partners of integrated care boards.””

[Baroness Cumberlege (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that wide-ranging introduction on workforce. There are a lot of issues that we will want to consider later, but at the moment we have before us the issue of what the Commons have done. They have returned our amendment back to the Lords, and it is now for us to consider whether we wish to pursue it.

I want to go back to the situation on Report in this House, and the amendment to Clause 35 of the Bill on the subject of workforce planning. That was passed by your Lordships with an overwhelming majority in this House. I thank noble Lords who gave their support and welcomed that we wanted to return this issue to the Commons on that occasion. I want to stress strongly that it was supported not only in this place but by over 100 different organisations throughout the country—charities, patient groups, think tanks, royal colleges, professional bodies and organisations representing NHS management and those working in the service. They are extremely worried about our workforce numbers and the future. What is going to happen to our services if we do not have enough people in the workforce? We need a proper plan. We need to know how we are going to take this forward.

We had hoped that the Government would listen to the strength of the arguments put last time and the strength of feeling, not to mention that in the Commons. We also hoped that the Government would agree that workforce planning is the greatest problem facing the NHS and social care and that we are in crisis. We have to handle this problem. We hoped there would be agreement that we need better planning, because we know that, without improved planning, we will not be able to tackle the growing backlog in procedures and appointments, with people waiting to be treated by the service. Even this morning, on the “Today” programme, one of our charities—Macmillan Cancer Support—came forward to speak about cancer services and to strongly say, “Please will you sort this problem because it needs sorting?”

Regrettably, despite the extraordinary consensus in favour of the amendment, it was, as noble Lords know, rejected in the other place. The case for improvements to workforce planning has been made by me and many others many times during the passage of this Bill. The current NHS waiting list stands at 6.1 million, and it is rising. More people are joining the waiting list every day—more than those who are being treated. This is not a new problem; according to the King’s Fund, it has been like this since 2016. Of course, we have had to deal with the pandemic, which has made matters a great deal worse.

I thank my noble friend the Minister very sincerely for the time he and the Bill team have spent with me trying to sort this problem out. But today, and often in previous debates, we are told that there are record numbers of staff in the health service. The fact remains that this does not seem to be enough—but of course we do not really know. We can experience it but we have not got the figures. We do not know whether we have the right people in the right place at the right time. We do not know if we have a plan for retention of the wonderful staff already working within the NHS and social care. As the backlog figures suggest, we are not meeting, and we will not meet, the public’s expectations when they turn to the NHS for care and support.

--- Later in debate ---

Given all this, I humbly ask my noble friend Lady Cumberlege to consider not moving her Motion and ask that the House accepts the Motions in my name.

[Baroness Cumberlege (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Kamall for that masterful summing up. It has been such a wide-ranging debate, so full of interest, and I thank all those who have supported the amendment, which is rather narrow compared to the enormous expanse of interest that we have had—and it has not only been about the UK. People have gone abroad and talked about China and all the things that are happening over there.

I particularly thank the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, who has been such a stalwart friend of mine and a great supporter of workforce planning. The noble Lord, Lord Stevens, has, of course, had more experience of this than most of us, running the great NHS England and NHS Improvement. I very much want to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, who has been a really strong supporter. I remember that in an earlier debate she said that no great organisation would run without knowing their workforce. Here we are with the NHS, this tremendous organisation that we have in this country, and we really do not know where it is going or how many staff are employed. We must look forward to see how it is going. As the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, said, it is a wicked problem that we have to solve.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, so much. The noble Lord said that he supported this amendment, and then we had this very interesting segue to China and other countries, about the way in which certain products are sourced from around the world and how we have to be very careful that they are not subject to slavery. Certainly, that was true of the remarks of the noble Lords, Lord Hunt, Lord Alton and Lord Rooker, and I thank them all very much for that very interesting part of the debate.

I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, who really works in the NHS. She knows what it is like, and she can understand what it is like not to have enough staff to do what you want to do, and her figures were so worrying and interesting. She described it as a dereliction of our duty if we do not grab this issue and come to some resolution on it.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, so much, too, for her support, as well as the noble Baronesses, Lady Watkins of Tavistock, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle and Lady Walmsley, who again has always supported the workforce plan. Finally, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, very much for what she was saying, and for the support that she has given us. We have to face this challenge and come to some resolution.

I say to my noble friend Lord Kamall that I really am very grateful for the work that he has tried to do on this, and the meetings that I have had with him and the Bill team. He has explained the other issues that he and the Bill team want to explore. However, rhetoric is very compelling. We have the most wonderful wordsmiths in the Department of Health, and in the Civil Service generally. They can win our hearts with the words that they use—the rhetoric—but that is not good enough. We want the numbers; we want to know exactly where people are working, what their skills are and what the future is, to take this forward.

I thank my noble friend, whose patience is amazing and inexhaustible. We have been round this issue so often, but I am afraid that I was not convinced by what I heard today. I am not convinced by strategies or reports, unless they really have the figures, and I have no confidence that the reports that he mentioned, and the strategy, will have that. So with great regret, I would like to test the opinion of the House.