Health: Healthcare Assistants

Baroness Greengross Excerpts

Monday 24th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

I can agree in part with what the noble Lord says. I do not agree that the training of nurses is skewed against what one might call the traditional caring activities that we associate with nursing, because my understanding is that the division is around 50:50 between the academic and practical elements of the training. We recognise the important contribution of nurses, not just in the new roles that they have taken on but in the fundamental aspects of care. They have the reach and relationships to improve outcomes and experiences for patients. We are doing our best to support them by various means.

[Baroness Greengross]

My Lords—

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, I often take my lead from the noble Baroness, Lady Masham. In an article in the Times today she said that a voluntary register was no cure. This, taken with the confusion created by, I am afraid, the noble Earl’s remarks about struck-off nurses, underlines the point at issue. I ask the Minister: is it really satisfactory that there is a chance that no one would know that a nurse was a struck-off nurse? Is it satisfactory that thousands of nursing care assistants are taking blood and carrying out procedures, but patients cannot know whether they are on a register and properly regulated? That is the problem. The noble Earl needs to think about the kind of juggernaut that is heading towards him on this one.