Health and Care Bill

Baroness Watkins of Tavistock Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 5th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I wish to lend my support very briefly to Motion B1, moved so very compellingly by the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege. I simply wish to pick up and echo the telling point from the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, who I think broadly said that if you carry on doing the same thing, you are going to get the same results.

I have had a look over the last week at what results we are getting. We have had the frankly shocking revelations in the Ockenden review, highlighting the really severe implications for patient safety, particularly for women and babies, when there are just not enough suitably trained staff around to do the vital job that they are there to do. I looked at that review last night and found it truly shocking. In the last 24 hours, we have had a Care Quality Commission report looking at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals. It said that they lacked enough qualified clinical staff to keep women and infants safe from avoidable harm and to provide the right treatment. There is also today’s report—it may have been yesterday’s—from the Health and Social Care Select Committee, highlighting the critical NHS staff shortages affecting cancer services in England, meaning that too many people are missing out on that critical early cancer diagnosis which is so vital to their chances of survival.

I know those are the worst things happening and that there are lots of good things, but those things are not acceptable. Things like that are why public satisfaction in the NHS, as the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, said, is sadly going down. That is a real problem; it is the reason I so strongly support Motion B1 and why there is such strong cross-party support for it in this Chamber.

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

My Lords, I support Motion B1 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege. I will be brief and not repeat what others have said. However, it is worth noting that in the Statement on the Ockenden report, the Secretary of State for Health said:

“I am also taking forward the specific recommendations that Donna Ockenden has asked me to. The first is on the need to further expand the maternity workforce.”—[Official Report, Commons, 30/3/22; col. 819.]


That phrase could be repeated for every part of the NHS and social care workforce, so I believe that has changed the situation since the other House debated this issue.

The public are asking what the national insurance levy is for if not to increase the number of professional staff in training. We are turning away people who want to be paramedics and nurses, as my noble friend has just said, who want to train locally. Of course we should undertake ethical overseas recruitment as well, but we need both. I firmly believe that this amendment needs the full support of this House.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Watkins, and to ensure that full support for Motion B1 has been presented from all round your Lordships’ House, including the Government Benches. The Green group also supports Motion C1 particularly strongly, and Motions D1, F1, G1 and L1, but I will speak briefly only to Motion B1 because it is so crucial.

In introducing this group the Minister spoke, as the Government often do, about the record numbers of staff in the NHS. I do not think anyone has yet mentioned the NHS staff survey conducted between September and November. Just 21% of nurses and midwives thought that there were enough staff in their unit to do their job properly and provide an adequate standard of care; almost 80% thought there were not enough. The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, referred to the Ockenden report: that helped to highlight that, despite the fact that the Government have been trying to recruit more midwives, in the last year the number of midwives has actually gone down.

We really have to ask ourselves why the Government are so opposed to this amendment when there is such strong support for it around this House and among all the key bodies around the country. It may be that the Government have an ideological objection to the word “planning”, or that the Minister does, but this is about the future of our NHS and all the evidence says that this is an essential amendment. Surely the Government are not going to let ideology stand in the way of the future of our NHS.

I finish by commenting on the typically wonderful introduction to this group from the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, who referred to the strong civil society campaign. The hashtag for it on Twitter is #StrengthInNumbers, and that says so much. We need the numbers and the facts so that we can get the numbers of staff in the NHS.