NHS Reform

Baroness Masham of Ilton Excerpts

Monday 4th April 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords—

[Baroness Masham of Ilton]

My Lords—

[Baroness Northover]

My Lords, I think that we have time for both speakers. It is time to hear from the Labour Party and then the Cross Benches.

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, those who have been re-engaged by the health service, having taken redundancy or early retirement, will forfeit their redundancy pay because there is a clawback arrangement in force, as I told the House the other day.

The noble Lord asked a number of questions. I want to be very brief because I am aware that the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, wants to get in before the time is up. Monitor was described as a promoter of competition. Expressed in stark terms like that, it sounds as though its job will be to go around drumming up competition where there is none already. That is not a correct reading of its functions; it is there to bear down on anti-competitive conduct and to ensure fair competition. The composition of consortia is a concern that we have heard about, and we will listen to that concern. It is now up to the pathfinder consortium to think about this kind of question. The early implementers of health and well-being boards are starting to think about those powers and how they can be used and we will listen to whatever they have to tell us.

[Baroness Masham of Ilton]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that patients very often cannot get an appointment with the GP of their choice so there is no continuity? If GPs have to undertake administration on the consortia, will this not get worse? Would it not be better if the consortia consisted of a mixture of GPs, specialists, nurses, administrators and patients? Working together would surely be better than working in conflict.

[Earl Howe]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right about working together, and our vision for good, clinically led commissioning is that all clinicians, not just GPs but everyone with a stake in the patient pathway, should join together and determine what good care looks like. However, she is mistaken in her first assumption. We are not asking thousands of GPs to become administrators. It will take only a very few to took after the commissioning of care in consortia, and the administration will be taken care of by management employed by the consortia.