Health and Social Care Bill

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Wednesday 16th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, I have some amendments in this group to which I would like to speak. The first is Amendment 62A, a probing amendment which seeks a government response. This amendment would require the Secretary of State to report annually on the steps taken in relation to the duties listed in the Bill. Currently we have the Chief Medical Officer’s annual report, which is excellent and provides an enormous amount of information particularly on matters relating to public health. However, given this Bill and the dramatic changes we will see in the delivery of healthcare across England, it seems important that we should have regular annual reporting that can be tracked from year to year against a specific set of headings. Over the years this would create comparators that could be used to see whether the quality and health improvements on which the Bill is focused are being achieved.

Similarly, I have amendments about undertaking an audit of healthcare providers’ processes and outcomes in terms of how they improve public health and implement the public health advice they receive. Amendment 71A, another probing amendment, suggests changing the wording of the provision so that there is an obligation to consider diagnosis and treatment rather than diagnosis or treatment, as the Bill currently provides. I tabled this amendment because I was somewhat horrified to see that the Bill provides a requirement to consider treatment but not to ensure that the diagnosis guiding the treatment is correct. Treatment for the wrong condition will result in morbidity and mortality related to the treatment plus progression of the underlying condition. I wonder whether that might not be a drafting issue which the Government might be inclined to look at again.

I have taken further advice on my Amendment 69A and have decided not to press it. I can therefore spare the Minister the trouble of trying to respond to it.

However, perhaps I may give a little evidence in support of this pressure to require reporting and audit at every level. There is high-powered and strong evidence from public health itself. Public health is a competency set, not a separate discipline. All public health practice needs epidemiology, biostatistics and a commitment to organisations and community understanding, with a focus on prevention and the implementation of evidence into practice. Evidence is not just a matter of, “Yes, there is evidence”, or, “No, there is not”. There is a hierarchy of scientific evidence in relation to public health.

It is important to understand that there are five criteria in relation to the reporting requirements that I am asking for. First, there may be evidence of no benefit. Secondly, there may be no evidence of benefit. Thirdly, there may be uncertain evidence of benefit. Fourthly, there may be evidence of efficacy. Fifthly, there may be evidence of both efficacy and effectiveness, which means that these interventions would incontrovertibly improve efficacy and seem feasible for large-scale implementation based on effectiveness trials. So that is very high-level evidence, and the others are hierarchies right down to the first I listed, which was a reason for decommissioning and stopping the use of an intervention.

Perhaps I may give some examples of where that hierarchy has influenced clinical practice and the reason why public health cannot be divorced from clinical practice. Even though this has been put on local authorities and will have a strong influence, I hope it will not become divorced from clinical practice. It needs to be linked to commissioning by GPs for the following reasons. First, it has been demonstrated that general practitioners and clinicians can save money if they provide advice on health in the consultation as well as dealing with the presenting complaint. Secondly, involving clinicians in detecting alcohol problems as part of a routine consultation has been shown to save money and lives. Thirdly, in nurse-led clinics there is evidence of cost-effective secondary prevention when they are used for targeted areas such as coronary heart disease. They can be extremely effective. Fourthly, drug treatment is a public health issue and there needs to be close working in the clinical setting to make sure that the use of drugs in conjunction with the appropriate use of pharmacy advice can maximise health benefit. Fifthly, primary care itself is more effective where public health is involved in the way that primary care is delivered. A very powerful trial conducted in the USA has shown that to be the case. Last but not least, high-tech interventions that at first sight might seem expensive, when properly evaluated in public health terms, have been shown to save lives and money, so they become an investment for savings.

Those are just some of the examples of why we need public health right at the heart of the changes, but we also need the monitoring that public health can bring to ensure that things that should happen are happening.

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The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, spoke about “and” and “or”. I assure her that the provision is expressed in a non-excluding way. I know that “chair and table and desk” appears to mean that you have everything, but if you put in “or” it makes it easier: if you have a chair and table, you are not ruled out if you do not have a desk as well. I hope that the noble Baroness is reassured. When I sought explanation about when to use “and” and “or”, it was explained that having “or” makes a provision more inclusive than having “and”. Therefore, the noble Baroness can be reassured that we are not going down the line of wanting treatment with no diagnosis. I cannot imagine that the medical profession would agree to that even if we were to propose it.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

I am grateful for the reassurance that the noble Baroness does not see any way of uncoupling diagnosis from treatment. I am not terribly comfortable with the furniture analogy. Pieces of furniture are not as complex and integrated as human bodies.

[Baroness Northover]

I have a feeling that carpenters might disagree. Nevertheless, I take on board what the noble Baroness says, and I hope that I have reassured her.

Where was I? I think that I have covered the points spelled out by various noble Lords on research and evidence. Research and evidence would rightly run right the way through these arrangements, and I would have expected noble Lords to flag this up. It is absolutely crucial that evidence underpins the work that is done. I heard what was said about nudging, and so on. The Select Committee itself said that it welcomed the exploration of new ways of doing things, provided that they do not dislodge other ways of assessing things. It is extremely important that, in all these areas, you assess what the impact of something is. I hope that noble Lords will be reassured. We will come on to this in a minute.

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Moved by

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

66: Clause 8, page 4, line 38, at end insert—
“( ) providing services for the prevention and treatment of harmful drinking and alcohol dependence.”

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, I hope the Committee will agree that it would be more convenient to discuss the spirit of this amendment when we come to the later group of amendments that focus on issues around alcohol—the group beginning with Amendment 71 —and that the other amendment in this group, Amendment 74B, warrants a short debate in its own right. I beg to move.

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[Baroness Northover]

I can see the temptation. The list in the Bill is indicative. These lists are always subject to much debate about what goes in and what stays out. I fully understand why the noble Baroness wishes to add her list. However, we would resist adding to the list in the Bill, which is, as she knows, indicative. We appreciate people's contributions to what needs to be covered in these areas. I point out to her that the list—no doubt we will spend many hours debating the regulations—includes all sorts of things, such as mental health services and dental public health services. I will not read out the whole list. If noble Lords think that something is on it that should not be there, or that other things that are not on it should be, I am sure that we will consider those points as we debate the regulations.

I noted a response to the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, but I think that I may be referring to a previous debate. She is absolutely right to emphasise that we have to make sure that everything we do is patient-centred. All the changes must focus on that. It is a challenge for everybody. Perhaps people have tried to do it before. No doubt we will have problems trying to do it ourselves, now and in the future, but that has to be the focus. Therefore, we have to remember the diversity of the patients that we are talking about. I am sorry; that answer belonged in an earlier debate.

I know that we will return later to debate alcohol. I hope that noble Lords will not press the amendments in this group.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 66 withdrawn.

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This is a probing amendment to test whether the Government have thought about this. It would be interesting to know what discussions they have had with local government. It would be very interesting indeed if the Minister could explain and show the House the benefit of any discussions the Government have had with Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland about ideas of difference. Devolution means that things will be different. I make it absolutely clear that I am not arguing for things to be the same, but there are benefits that you can learn from discussion, and I am not clear that there have been such discussions. At the moment, England will be the loser, in particular because of the mishmash of two-tier local government, without the central leadership that a chief environmental health officer could provide. I beg to move.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, I hope that the Government will be able to give some assurance that environmental health will be recognised in the new public health services that will be established. I became acutely aware of the importance and contribution of environmental health when I chaired the House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee inquiry into allergy. Environmental health officers were most helpful on issues around climate change, air quality, diesel particles and the hyperallergenic effect of high levels of diesel in making pollen more allergenic.

When I chaired the inquiry into carbon monoxide poisoning, I had a great deal of help from the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health on gas safety and gas regulation. It brought its engineering and architectural expertise to inform that inquiry. It is important to be aware that although these professionals are called environmental health officers, they come from a broad range of backgrounds and bring in engineering, architecture and what you might broadly call environmental physics to inform the health debate. They are complementary to but not duplicated by the provisions in standard public health medicine.

[Lord Greaves]

I echo everything that the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, has just said. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, has raised some extremely important issues and hit some serious problems at the heart of the Bill. I am not sure that his solution is the right one, but it needs discussion. I am sorry that the noble Baroness, Lady Gould, in not in her place because she made the important point that the meaning of the phrase “public health” has evolved over the years. The core Public Health Act 1936 was about the role of local authorities in relation to public health and what we now call environmental health.

In the 1974 local government reorganisation, public health functions were split. Half went to the health service, the other half remained with local government, and the phrases “environmental health” and “environmental health officers” were largely invented at that time to distinguish the new environmental health service from what had previously been public health. Of course, in two-tier authorities environmental health is a function of the lower-tier authority.

The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, made a very important point. We have some amendments coming up, probably in a few hours’ time, when we will discuss this, so I will not say a great deal more about that now except to make the basic point that it is very important indeed that environmental health functions, which already rest with unitary authorities but in county and district areas will rest with district authorities, are properly integrated with the rest of the public health function.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, said, the things that environmental health officers and departments do are astonishingly varied. If a problem is clearly a public health or environmental health problem, they will find the expertise, go out and get expert advice if it does not exist within that authority, and tackle it. It is a very important function indeed. However, at the national level, environmental health, as defined in the Local Government Act 1974, rests with the Department for Communities and Local Government, not with the Department of Health. It probably ought to rest with the DCLG because it is very clearly a local government function, but again, at the national level, the Government need to take action to integrate it into the new, very important public health functions of the Secretary of State.

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Moved by

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

71: Clause 9, page 5, line 17, leave out “may” and insert “must”

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, I am grateful to the House for being so accommodating in moving the amendments slightly so that we can discuss alcohol now. The reason for this group of amendments is because of the ever increasing problem and toll on our society from alcohol misuse. These amendments are designed to ensure that alcohol misuse is a national priority for the Secretary of State and a priority for local authorities and clinical commissioning groups. Amendments 328, 329 and 331 ensure that local organisations have levers in their responsibility to promote integration; and that health and well-being boards and health and well-being strategies take into account alcohol misuse and are devised with appropriate expertise in alcohol misuse.

Turning to the individual amendments, we passed over Amendment 66 briefly for convenience, but it links to Amendment 71, which changes the duty on the Secretary of State from “may” to “must” because of the danger to health that alcohol poses. Alcohol is a major and growing public health concern. Alcohol misuse affects 4 per cent of the population and more than 10 million people drink above the recommended limits. The prevalence of liver disease, to which alcohol is the major contributor, is growing and is set to overtake stroke and coronary heart disease as a cause of death in the next 10 to 15 years. This is set out in the Department of Health’s document on developing a national liver strategy, published last year.

Last year, more than 1 million hospital admissions were due to alcohol misuse. This represents a doubling in the number of admissions over eight years and the rise is becoming exponential. The estimated cost of alcohol-related harm to the NHS in England is £2.7 billion based on 2006-07 prices. However, the overall cost to the nation from all aspects of alcohol abuse is £20 billion. The Exchequer gets back only £13 billion from tax on alcohol, so there is a £7 billion gap. We just cannot leave that unaddressed. Amendment 72 would insert a new subsection to state that one of the steps that local authorities and the Secretary of State might take to improve public health is,

“providing services for the prevention and treatment of harmful drinking and alcohol dependence”.

In Clause 9, local authorities will take new responsibilities for public health. As PCTs and strategic health authorities are abolished and their responsibilities are transferred to clinical commissioning groups and the Commissioning Board, there is a need to make sure that nothing falls through any gaps. Local authorities’ new public health responsibilities will be supported through their ring-fenced budget of £4 billion, which we have already heard about. However, at present they are unaware of how much funding they will actually receive, and there is a real danger that, with a squeeze on local government’s finance, the budget may be used to fill other gaps within the increasing number of responsibilities that local authorities will be taking over.

The Bill does not specifically state that local authorities will have responsibility for alcohol services, but those of us who have put our names to these amendments are keen to see that in the Bill. It has to become a statutory responsibility, given that the problem is evergrowing. The Department of Health’s consultation on commissioning and funding routes for public health stated that the commissioning of treatment, harm reduction and prevention services for alcohol and drugs will be the responsibility of these local authorities.

The public health outcomes framework includes outcomes on the rate of hospital admissions per 100,000 for alcohol-related harm, and the NHS outcomes framework includes a measure of the mortality rate among the under-75 age group from liver disease, based on a set of conditions where alcohol contributes to 50 to 60 per cent of liver disease overall in the country.

The voluntary sector providers of alcohol services risk a disinvestment in their services if they are not given sufficient priority. They find that their services are already often marginalised and stigmatised because they are dealing with a marginalised and stigmatised group. Some alcohol services that are currently funded by the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse will be integrated into Public Health England, and the future of its funding is unclear.

Alcohol services have tended to be a Cinderella in public health, with smoking and illegal drug misuse tending to be prioritised over alcohol. I completely welcome the emphasis on smoking cessation and tackling illegal drug misuse but I regret that alcohol has slipped past and the problem has escalated in the process.

To put this into perspective, on average £136 is spent on dependent drinkers, compared with more than £1,300 on dependent drug users. Yet we know that the social toll on the health, particularly of children in families where there is a problem drinker, can be as great as the toll where drug abuse is going on. The cost of smoking has been estimated to be £2.7 billion a year, which is the same as the cost to the NHS of alcohol. The problem is no smaller than smoking.

The wording in Amendment 202 is designed to ensure that clinical commissioning groups have a duty to make reducing alcohol-related harm a priority. General practitioners have a crucial role to play in identifying, assessing and referring people with alcohol use disorders. General practitioners have tended to under-identify alcohol misuse and, unfortunately, GPs identify only about one in 67 males and one in 82 females who are hazardous and harmful drinkers. Detection in general practice is currently woefully inadequate. Less than one-third of GPs use an alcohol-screening questionnaire.

The Government have indicated that 15 per cent of QOF funding will be assigned to public health and primary prevention indicators from 2013. All the proposed public health indicators are focused on smoking, and the indicator for screening for alcohol misuse has to date been rejected. There is strong evidence that brief intervention and advice in primary care can lead to one in eight people reducing their drinking to sensible levels, so it becomes a very cost-effective and clinically effective intervention. That has been demonstrated in 22 randomised control trials, so there is a very high level of evidence for this clinical intervention.

Amendments 238 and 239 are designed to ensure that the joint health and well-being strategies takes into account the drinking levels in the local population and, in preparing those strategies, that the people who have experience in alcohol services are involved. The joint strategic needs assessment must include an examination of levels of hazardous, harmful and dependent alcohol use in the population and must widen the scope of the local authority with its partner clinical commissioning groups in preparing the health and well-being strategy to include alcohol service representatives.

These joint needs assessments will be very important in underpinning the overall direction taken with funding and commissioning services. That is why Amendment 331 requires health and well-being boards to include expertise in alcohol and drug services in the preparation of reports and strategies on the health and well-being boards. It is worth noting that the criminal injury compensation from alcohol-related injury alone is substantial and is a cost that we are handing on to the next generation. There is also a cost to the private sector from alcohol abuse, which comes completely outside any health costs, such as when premises are damaged, sometimes very severely and set on fire in alcohol-fuelled criminal activity.

Overall, integration is essential. If we are going to spend £400 million per annum on dealing with alcohol-fuelled injury that results in hospital admissions and violent woundings, one must remember that that is only the cost of those that have been recorded by the police. The actual cost just from injuries and woundings is possibly twice that. With an overall cost of £21 billion to the public purse from alcohol abuse, I suggest that this cannot be ignored in the Bill. I beg to move.

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[The Archbishop of York]

As the Minister resumes her seat, I would ask: if the matter is so serious, what is the problem with changing the word from “may” to “must”? What difficulty does that bring? Seeing the seriousness of the matter, why do the Government continue to say, “We will watch this”, “We will do this”, or “There will be a review of this”? This is a very simple amendment. I would have thought that they could, for once, admit and accept that the amendment be inserted, instead of postponing for some future thing. What is the real problem? I have not heard an answer to why “may” must remain and “must” must not be inserted.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

I am extremely grateful to the most reverend Primate for that very eloquent and sensible interjection at this stage. I know that, in responding, the Minister has tried to be reassuring, but I note that she said that the scale of the problem is such that it would be astonishing if it was not addressed.

The Minister also said that it would not be a panacea to put it into the Bill, and there I disagree because it is not a panacea putting things in legislation. We have to protect the children growing up in this country who are abused through alcohol-related harm. They are bereaved by the deaths of their parents through alcohol. They are becoming the next victims of excessive misuse of alcohol. To do that, we have to put things into the Bill. We have seatbelt legislation, which has dramatically decreased the number of children who die in road accidents. We have legislation about smoking in public places, which has dramatically decreased smoking. In Wales, we are actively looking at smoking in confined places and at legislation on domestic abuse, precisely because of the alcohol-fuelled domestic abuse problem that is escalating, as my noble friend Lord Wigley said earlier.

I am most grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to the debate. The call for something in relation to general practitioners has been overwhelming from several noble Lords. I remind the House that secondary care is being evermore squeezed—squeezed until the pips squeak—and is taking a hit for the failure of alcohol-misuse control in our communities. That is where massive expenditure is incurred. It all seems to come together and it seems as though that is the final sump. The financial hit alone deprives other patients with other conditions from being looked after properly.

I shall not divide the Committee on this today, but I say to the Government that the failure of the Ministry of Justice to bring in pilots to control excessive drinking and drunkenness in our city centres, through allowing sentencing schemes for magistrates, has strengthened my resolve. Unless we get something in the Bill, all the strategies and persuasion in the world will not turn around this ever-increasing toll—the graph goes up and up. At this stage, I shall withdraw the amendment but I shall certainly return to it on Report. I hope that the Minister and the Bill team will engage in some constructive discussions as it would be much better for everyone to reach a compromise on this rather than to have to divide the House.

Amendment 71 withdrawn.

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[Lord Clement-Jones]

I, too, support the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. He clearly has a great deal of support in the Committee for the amendments, on which he spoke so eloquently, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins.

I come at this as a former chairman, and now the president, of Ambitious about Autism, the autism education charity, and also as a very strong supporter of I CAN, the communications charity for children. I also strongly believe that speech, language and communications needs should be regarded as a public health issue. As both the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins, highlighted, speech, language and communication needs are the most common disability experienced by children or adults, and it is now being recognised that communication is indeed the single most significant factor in determining a child’s life chances. Because our economy has become increasingly dependent on communication-based employment, the fitness of a person in this century will be defined ever more in terms of his or her ability to communicate effectively. The economic impact on society of people whose communication disability renders them unemployable is significant and is growing year on year. As a society, we need to recognise this issue and find ways to improve the communication skills of children and adults.

As has been pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, a number of primary care trusts and local authorities in England have indeed already recognised the importance of boosting early language and communication development. They have aligned the work of speech and language therapists with the Healthy Child Programme and Sure Start children’s centres to create a powerful public health approach based on primary prevention.

However, in contrast, many commissioners—this was also mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins—as reported by Sir Ian Kennedy last year in Getting it Right for Children and Young People, have a limited understanding of children with speech, language and communication needs. Many of these local areas are still not doing enough to address these needs, and it is clear that the economic and social benefits of early intervention and prevention of speech, language and communication needs must be much better promoted. That is why the approach indicated by these amendments is so important and why I support them.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

I have added my name to one of the amendments in this group but support many of the others. The key issue is that children often need accurate diagnosis but do not get it. It is the way in which you detect learning difficulties of all sorts—sensory impairment and motor impairment. The need for a range of services integrated to support children is critical because as they grow up, unless their needs are addressed early they become greater; they do not decrease.

I shall illustrate that. A little girl, whom I shall call Emily, is eight. She was born prematurely but by the time she is eight, having had a stormy neo-natal period, she has epilepsy, cerebral palsy and swallowing difficulties. She is wheelchair-dependent, partially sighted and has communication difficulties. For her ordinary care, like other children, she needs her GP, district nurse and health visitor. For her hydrocephalus she needs paediatric neurosurgery. For her complex epilepsy she needs paediatric neurology. She needs physiotherapy because of the cerebral palsy and cramps. She needs speech and language therapy to help her learn to swallow efficiently and occupational therapists who help her to manipulate her communication device through which she communicates with her family who love her dearly and want to do the best for her.

That is one example and we have hundreds of children in our country who need integrated co-ordinated care. Perhaps Emily was lucky because she got the interventions that she needed and they were brought together. But, we also have a lot of children, as referred to in this debate, who are being missed on the way through because they do not have such clear-cut presentations. That is why, unless we use this as an opportunity to really change the way that we look after our children in health and social care in the broader context, we will be failing them.

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, this is a very important debate and the first opportunity we have had to look at the proposals affecting children. The Government’s plan is that public health services for children under the age of five, including health visiting and the family-nurse partnership, will initially be commissioned by the NHS Commissioning Board. To facilitate its plans to increase the health visiting workforce by 4,200 over a four-year period from 2011, the intention is that eventually this responsibility will pass to local authorities, which from the outset commissioned services for children between the ages of five and 19, including the Healthy Child Programme for school-age children. Maternity care meanwhile will now be undertaken by CCGs, although it was originally intended that this would be undertaken by the NHS Commissioning Board. The board will still be responsible for specialist neonatal services.

In the very helpful public health report recently published by the House of Commons Health Committee, Councillor Rogers of the LGG told the committee that the initial split of commissioning children’s public health services,

“doesn’t make sense. There is obviously a serious risk of a gap developing around the age of five, and it doesn’t make sense for school nursing to be in one place and health visiting to be in another”.

The Government’s response to the Health Select Committee was that,

“we believe that the commitment to raise the number of health visitors by 2015 is best achieved through NHS commissioning and thus will retain our existing proposal that the NHS Commission Board should lead commissioning in this area in the short-term”.