Health and Care Bill

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Monday 24th January 2022 Lords Chamber

This is a very curious group. I shall just mention the two amendments to which I have put my name—though I think the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, has said it all—and refer to the importance of self-management. The evidence in favour of self-management is overwhelming. I refer the House to the data analytics team at the Health Foundation, who have begun to fill some of the evidence gap in relation to this. They have shown that the patients most able to manage their health conditions have 38% fewer emergency admissions and 32% fewer A&E attendances than those least able to manage their conditions; they also have 18% fewer GP appointments. This is the first study in the NHS to have demonstrated an association between a patient’s ability to self-manage and the use of services across primary and secondary care. That is an important start to an evidence base. The Minister has not been sympathetic to many amendments; it has been warm words but little action so far. I hope that, on our fifth day in Committee, on these two amendments put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, the Minister might just say that he will accept them.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, this has been a very interesting short debate. I have two issues to raise. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for having raised perverse incentives and, indeed, the danger with perverse incentives that senior consultants with a great deal of experience could be absent from NHS premises when undertaking work such as surgery in other premises; they would therefore not be available to their NHS patients in the event of a problem and some surgery being left to more junior members of staff.

The other issue is the difficulty of ensuring true consent and information for patients when they are offered choice, with respect to their awareness of the staffing levels in the premises to which they will be going. In some of the private providers, there is not very comprehensive out-of-hours medical cover—particularly at night—with somebody on site. There is also a problem that, if a patient should develop a complication, foreseen or even unforeseen, and is in need of an intervention, they may then need to be transferred to a local NHS intensive care unit. In that event, it would be important for the money to follow the patient. If that intensive care unit is out of the area from which the patient has come, I hope that the regulations will allow for appropriate funding of that NHS facility.

[Lord Warner (CB)]

Is the noble Baroness aware that, during the arrangements in which there were contracts with the independent sector to provide elective surgery in independent treatment centres, the quality of that care was both reviewed by the then Chief Medical Officer, Liam Donaldson, and looked at, with evidence taken, by the Health Select Committee? They found that claims about shortcomings in these private facilities were exaggerated—their provision of services was equally as good as that of the NHS facilities.

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[Baroness Barker (LD)]

Following on from that, one point that we should take into account is the extent to which the private sector and the NHS rely on the same workforce. That is particularly the case in relation to consultants and less so for nurses.

While we can argue about the location, price or quality, perhaps, of treatment and aftercare, the key issue is diagnostics, which is a huge issue at the moment in the NHS. I have a slightly different take on that. For all of my life, my mum was deaf, and I have to say that the quality of NHS hearing aids was about 10 years behind the private sector’s—but people trusted them; they trusted the quality of the diagnostics and the advice that they were given. We have moved a long way in terms of diagnostics for eyecare and hearing aids, but it does not matter where that happens; what the general public want to do is to be able to trust the quality and independence of the diagnostics that they get. If we can do that, I rather suspect that the general public, in the wake of the pandemic, when they see the NHS struggling in all sorts of ways to make up for two years in which their staff have been pulled around, sometimes away from their specialties, would be quite forgiving—as long as there are some very basic agreements about how it will work and the integrity of the work and systems.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

I am most grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, for adding some clarification to the point that I was trying to make. I am not for or against any system; all I am saying is that the arrangements have to be in place so that nobody is jeopardised—and indeed, in the event of a patient being transferred from a private facility back into the NHS, that part of the NHS is appropriately recompensed, particularly if the patient comes from a long way away.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, the problem to which the noble Lord, Lord Warner, is suggesting a possible solution is the result of long-term underplanning and underfunding of staffing in the NHS, and underfunding also of the capital budgets of hospitals, which sometimes have to choose between mending the roof and buying a piece of equipment that would get patients through the system more effectively and efficiently.

On the comments from my noble friend Lord Rennard on self-management, it is of course not just better care that that produces—it is also very cost effective. I draw noble Lords’ attention to page 3 of the Bill, line 13, where one of the three things to which NHS England has to pay regard about the wider effects of its decisions is

“efficiency and sustainability in relation to the use of resources”.

The resources are much better and more efficiently used if the patient has a decent choice of the equipment and treatment that is most effective for them, and it is often a great deal cheaper.

I also agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, that we need the guidance. We need to see it before Report, and I hope that the Minister will be able to provide that.

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[Lord Kakkar (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 173 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, to which I have added my name, and I broadly support the amendments in this group.

Many noble Lords have identified the question of workforce as the most important single issue that the Bill has to address. Without effective workforce planning, the NHS, as we have heard—and, indeed, the care system—is in peril. Previously, our country and the National Health Service have depended on overseas doctors and nurses to come and fill large numbers. That has been the principal basis of workforce planning for many years—indeed, decades. But that is no longer a viable option. The World Health Organization has estimated that, globally, there will be a shortage of some 18 million healthcare professionals by 2030. That will be a particularly difficult challenge across the globe, and it means that we can no longer depend on importing healthcare professionals to meet our ever-increasing needs. This is well recognised by all who are responsible for the delivery of healthcare and, indeed, by Her Majesty’s Government.

The question is: how can we dependably plan for the future? Unfortunately, it has to be accepted—indeed, it has been accepted in this debate—that planning to date has failed miserably. That is not a malicious failure, but it is a reality, and one that we can no longer tolerate. That is why amendments in this group that deal with the requirement for independent planning and reporting on a regular basis to provide the basis for determination and projecting future health and care workforce needs, are appropriate—indeed, essential.

My noble friend Lord Warner raised a separate issue about a group of amendments that will come later in the Committee’s consideration, which propose the establishment of an independent office for health and care sustainability. This is a recommendation of your Lordships’ ad hoc Committee on the Long-term Sustainability of the NHS and adult social care, chaired by my noble friend Lord Patel. It is this emphasis on ensuring that there is independent, long-term planning and projection that can provide the fundamental and accurate foundations for workforce planning. We need a broader assessment of what the demand for healthcare will be, and that demand is complex and driven by not only demographic change but changes in the way that we practise, changes in expectations, adoption of technology and changes in working practices. That all needs to be brought together to provide the foundations for planning. Without this emphasis and this obligation secured in the Bill, the NHS and adult social care in our country will not be sustainable.

I very much urge the Minister, in considering this group of amendments, to help your Lordships understand why it would be wrong to secure this emphasis in the Bill. If Her Majesty’s Government are unable to secure this emphasis in the Bill, how can they reassure noble Lords that the failures in planning that have dogged NHS performance with regard to workforce over so many years will not be repeated in the future?

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, to state the obvious, without a workforce plan we cannot have a workforce. Amendment 170 certainly seems to get to the heart of the issue, which was so well introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, and my noble friend Lord Stevens.