NHS England: Waiting Lists

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Tuesday 16th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

Immigrants have always played a vital role in our country. If we cast our minds back to the post-war period, there were massive shortages in healthcare but also other public services. Indeed, my own father came over to work on the railways and buses. It shows the importance of immigration and immigrants to this country from across the world.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that the fundamental problem confronting the NHS is a lack of spare capacity and resilience? This means that the NHS is continuously running at unsustainably hot levels of bed occupancy. The UK has 2.7 hospital beds per 1,000 population compared to an EU average of 5.2, and significantly fewer doctors and nurses. What plans do the Government have to urgently increase capacity and deal with workforce shortages, which cannot all come from training new people from scratch, given the timescales involved?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

If the noble Baroness looks at the statistics relating to the waiting lists, she will see that 75% of patients do not actually require surgical treatment: they require diagnostics. We have announced an investment in community diagnostic centres— sometimes in shopping centres or sports grounds—to make diagnostics more accessible to the public, rather than having to go to a healthcare setting. Moreover, 80% of patients requiring surgical treatments can be treated without an overnight stay in hospital, so they can do that as day patients. This is where we want to focus, along with making sure that we tackle all the waiting lists right across the board.