Health and Care Bill

Baroness Watkins of Tavistock Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 20th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Layard (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendment 101B, in my name and those of the noble Baroness, Lady Watkins, and the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, is a fundamental amendment to remedy the shocking imbalance between the provision of mental and physical healthcare. As was said in the debate last week, people with mental disorders who receive treatment are a minority—35% of children and 40% of adults—while for people with physical illnesses, the vast majority get treated. This is not parity of esteem; in fact, I think it is one of the greatest cases of discrimination in our public life. There is only one way to remedy it, which is that the funding of mental healthcare has to rise faster than the funding of physical healthcare. In other words, the fraction of NHS funding devoted to mental healthcare has to rise—it is a matter of simple logic. This is such a fundamental point of principle that it should be put into law.

The increase does not of course have to go on for ever, but only until the inequality has been eliminated and mental health is treated like physical health. In the words of the amendment, the rise should continue until

“people coming forward with mental health problems are as likely to be offered treatment as people with physical health problems”,

and, of course, to receive it within a period of time appropriate to their problem. Only then will we have achieved parity of esteem.

The amendment is a statement of principle. As we know, there are always problems of definition and interpretation with statements of principle, but such statements are common in our statute law. This is a sector, in financial terms, as big as the police service, and it is right that there should be legal principles governing it. If we want to secure justice for the sector, it needs a statement of principle. This is a stronger statement than any of those discussed last week, but if this is what we believe, it is what we should say.

The main argument for the amendment, as I have said, is one based on simple equity, but there is also a strong economic argument. Mental illness is mainly a disease of working age, while physical illness is mainly a disease of retirement. Half of all working-age disability and absenteeism is due to mental illness, so when we successfully treat mental illness, the savings to the economy and to the Exchequer are massive, especially when compared with the economic savings from the majority of physical healthcare. These economic savings were a key argument that led to the establishment of IAPT, Improving Access to Psychological Therapies, from 2008 onwards, and they have been verified in what has happened since in that service.

There is also another very important source of savings: savings to NHS physical healthcare. Psychological therapy has been shown to reduce the cost of physical healthcare for people with comorbid physical conditions. This can be seen in a major nationwide controlled trial done recently, which provided IAPT treatments to people with long-term physical conditions such as diabetes, CVD and COPD. This trial found that, within a year, the savings on physical healthcare covered the total cost of the psychological therapy—so the mental health service is saving money for the physical healthcare service. As a result, this approach is now being rolled out nationally.

So mental health is a classic case of spend to save, and extra spending is desperately needed. Some of it would fill the massive gaps in existing services, including for severe mental illness, and some of it would provide services to key groups of people who are barely helped at present, many of whom were referred to earlier in this debate.

First come the tragic children who fall below the CAMHS threshold, who are sometimes assessed and sent back home as not sick enough, but who desperately need help. For these young people, the Government are developing mental health support teams in schools, but the rollout is incredibly slow and the services also need to include a much higher level of expertise.

Then there are millions of people whose lives are wrecked by addiction to drugs, alcohol and gambling and who need psychological therapy. There are the victims and perpetrators of domestic violence, who have already been mentioned, and other forms of violence. So many of our social problems have a strong mental health component. There are good, evidence-based psychological treatments which NICE recommends for these problems, but they are not provided. They should be provided. Extra spending on mental health could massively improve our society.

There is one further point in the amendment. If we spend the money, we need to know what it is achieving. In IAPT we know the progress of 100% of those treated, but in most parts of adult and child mental health services we currently have very little quantitative data on what is being achieved. That has to change, so universal routine outcome measurement should be a reasonable quid pro quo for extra funding, but the extra funding is crucial. It is not enough to talk about parity of esteem. We must have a clear statement of how to recognise it and the funding principles to achieve it.

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to this group of amendments with an emphasis on Amendment 101B, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Layard, whom it is a pleasure to follow.

Last night, I went to the ballet and saw “Raymonda”, which has been placed in the context of the Crimea. It reminded me that Florence Nightingale took a hammer to a store-cupboard to get food and blankets for some of her patients because nobody knew what was inside it. She went on to be a leader in sound data for health- care, recognising that without data we could not plan for the future. This amendment emphasises measuring the outcomes of mental health nursing and other mental health interventions in order to ensure that we learn from practice and develop best practice cost-effectively. That is why I have put my name to Amendment 101B.

We need to look at similar patterns for care to those for physical illness. For example, the onset of paranoia and delusions which threaten the safety of an individual or those close to them could perhaps be equated with a suspected cancer where you wait for two weeks for an initial diagnosis. How many people are sectioned under the Mental Health Act for assessment because they have not managed to get an out-patient appointment for assessment earlier? I believe that is an example of discrimination against people with severe mental health problems. If we could get parity of access for assessment, it would be an extremely good beginning. I recognise that there are other physical and mental health problems that are less urgent, but I use that as a comparison.

Yesterday at a meeting concerning mental health reform after the pandemic, the Minister for Care and Mental Health Gillian Keegan and the chief executive of Mind were panellists. At that meeting, it was noted that investment in NHS mental health services currently increases year on year, largely due, I think, to action under the leadership of the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Birmingham. It was £11 billion in 2015-16 and is £14.3 billion today and it will continue to increase, including an additional £2.3 billion by 2023-24. It was said yesterday that the Government will ensure ICBs will increase spending on mental health in their area in line with growth in their overall funding allocations to meet the mental health investment standard. To address backlogs, the Government have published their mental health recovery action plan backed by an additional £5 million to ensure that the right support is in place. This illustrates that the Government are committed to the improvement of mental health services. The amendment would place a duty to monitor this investment and evaluate its effectiveness. I hope that the Minister feels able to support the principle behind the amendment and will meet those of us interested in this area to try to find a summary solution to the issues we are raising on parity not only for mental health care but for the care sector that has been outlined so comprehensively by my noble friend Lady Hollins.

All the points that were made by the noble Lord, Lord Black of Brentwood, concerning osteoporosis could be made for drug-induced psychosis, schizophrenia and other severe mental illness problems. I hope that this Committee will be able to influence an amendment to the Bill that will ensure that the monitoring outlined in the amendment introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Layard, will be taken forward.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 50 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Black, but I want to say how much I agree with Amendment 297J, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, about the mess we have between local government and the NHS on sexual health services in general and the HIV services that she mentioned.

My view is that local government has a choice. It either accepts that it is part of a national service here and agrees to earmark funding allocations, or the service will have to go back to the NHS. The current situation is not working. Some local authorities are having to take on the responsibilities of others because some local authorities are not spending sufficiently. There is a movement of people, largely into the big cities, and it is an unfair system. We have to do something about it.

I also support the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, in her Amendment 110. Anyone listening to the debates during the recent passage of the domestic abuse legislation would have noted that one of the big challenges is the lack of integration among local agencies. I am afraid the NHS is a part of that and the noble Baroness’s amendment would give a very clear indication to the NHS that we expect more of it.

I have no doubt that, in winding, the Minister will say that Amendment 50 is not necessary because there is already a general duty on the NHS to provide fracture liaison services and the department is doing all it can to encourage the NHS to implement them. However, the dilemma for us is that the positive outcomes from those services have been known about for many years, yet progress in moving to the standard adoption of them through the country is very slow indeed.

As far back as 2010, the Royal College of Physicians produced an audit of the quality of clinical care of patients who had fallen, had a fracture and had been seen in a hospital emergency department. It reckoned then that only 32% of patients with a non-hip fracture received an adequate fracture risk assessment. Just 28% were established on anti-osteoporosis medication within 12 weeks. As a result, the Department of Health incentivised primary care services to initiate these treatments for relevant patients, but, by the end of the first year of that scheme, fewer than one in five patients were receiving the treatments.

Health and Care Bill

Baroness Watkins of Tavistock Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Thursday 13th January 2022 Lords Chamber

Amendment 66 therefore seeks to make smoking and other modifiable risk factors to health the responsibility of integrated care systems and local authorities, which must work together if we are to improve public health, with all the benefits that follow, including helping to protect our NHS.

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

My Lords, I am delighted to speak to this group of amendments, which I support; I am particularly delighted to speak to Amendment 156, as one of its co-sponsors. I very much support the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Young, who has highlighted the appalling health disparities faced by people who are the most socially excluded. I, too, ask the Government to recognise how amending the Bill in the way proposed would help them to realise their ambitions in this area.

We know that the level of ill health among people who would be considered under inclusion health is significant. We have heard the shamefully low average age of death for people experiencing homelessness in England and Wales. We also know that the life expectancy of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities is around 10 to 12 years fewer than that of the general population, although one study has found that this gap can be as high as 28 years. This disparity in life expectancy clearly demonstrates the devastating impact of extreme social exclusion.

It is clear to me that the health and social care system has a significant role to play in tackling the health inequalities experienced by these groups. These amendments would facilitate crucial progress towards that and encourage social enterprise involvement to reach the most socially excluded individuals. We have seen examples of this at the relatively new Plymouth dentistry school, where the training clinic has been set up as a social enterprise to serve some of the poorest people in Plymouth.

In relation to Amendment 156 in particular, we know that NHS services must be integrated with wider services to reflect how people’s lives work. A main aim of the Bill is integration, yet integration could not be more important for the groups that experience the most complex needs and require very effective, co-ordinated care. As I know from my time in nursing, there has been a historic lack of integration between housing, health and social care, yet housing is fundamental to reducing health inequalities. Without integration across these different systems, people will continue to develop acutely poor health.

People who experience social exclusion, and extreme health inequalities as a result, often fall through the gaps in the provision of primary and secondary care, mental health and substance misuse services, health and social care, and even health and wider systems, such as housing. For example, we know that people experiencing homelessness attend A&E six times as often as people with a home, are admitted to hospital four times as often, and stay three times as long. One study has found that homeless people attend A&E 60 times more than the general population. This has tragic results for the individual and also places incredible strain on our healthcare system.

We must act to alleviate the pressures on the NHS where we can. Severe and multiple disadvantage is conservatively estimated to cost society more than £10 billion a year. It is clear that the cost of doing nothing is too high, both to the individual suffering severe health inequalities and to the NHS. This amendment would help address these issues by ensuring that housing is considered by integrated care partnerships. It is non-mandatory, therefore speaking to the Government’s aims of enabling local decision-making and flexibility, but would ensure that partnerships think of the important role that housing plays by providing a stable place from which people can then engage with wider health services. A wide range of expert organisations are supportive of this amendment and related Amendments 152 and 157, including Crisis, Social Enterprise UK, Doctors of the World, and Friends, Families and Travellers.

The NHS must work effectively for all who are entitled to use it, including those who need it most. If we get access and outcomes right for the most marginalised in our society—those who experience the poorest health —we will likely get access and outcomes right for everyone. That is why I call on the Government to support the amendments in this group.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, Amendments 68 and 95 are in my name. I declare my role as president of the Rural Coalition. I support the broad drift of these amendments, which engage with the important issue of reducing inequalities.

Rural health and social care has often presented challenges in terms of proximity to services, the types of services available within a local area and the demographics of rural areas. It is complicated. Rural areas have a higher proportion of older residents, which is always a greater burden on healthcare services compared with areas with younger populations.

Furthermore, a variety of issues that feed into rural health and social care are beyond the remit of the Bill. In March 2017, Defra produced its Rural Proofing practical guidance to help policymakers assess the impact of policies on rural areas. At the time, this was a welcome initiative to ensure that rural interests were being adequately considered and, to quote the report, that

“these areas receive fair and equitable policy outcomes.”

Unfortunately, concerns have since grown among rural groups that this guidance has become a sort of bureaucratic box-ticking exercise in Whitehall that does not take into account the complexities of rural life.

Funding allocations are often the result of specific metrics or formulas, many of which disadvantage rural communities. For example, a 2021 report by the Rural Services Network, Towards the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, highlighted how many of the post-Brexit levelling-up funds disadvantaged poor rural areas due to way in which they measured poverty. The Department for Transport’s own 2017 statistics showed that, on average, travel from rural areas to either a GP or hospital was 40% longer by car and 94% longer via public transport when compared with travel in urban locations.

Further, 2017 figures from Rural England highlighted the higher rates of delayed transfer of care from hospitals in rural areas: 19.2 cases per 100,000 compared with 13 per 100,000 in urban locations. Analysis by the RSN has shown that, when compared with predominately urban areas, rural local authorities received significantly less grant funding per head to pay for services such as social care and public health responsibilities, in spite of the fact that they generally deal with older populations. Other problems include limited intensive care capacity in rural areas, the loss of local services through amalgamations, the relatively few specialist medical staff in rural areas, and the general staff shortage and retention issues facing rurality.

It is commendable that the Government have legislated in this Bill to introduce a duty on integrated care boards to reduce inequalities between patients with respect to their ability to access health services. My amendments would extend this principle and reduce those health inequalities with respect to where someone lives, whether it is an urban or rural area, and place a duty on ICBs to co-operate with each other for the purpose of reducing healthcare access inequalities. In effect, this is a statutory rural-proofing requirement.

This duty to consider rural access when reducing inequalities extends to co-operation between ICBs because rural areas often exist on the periphery of a large geographical region where patients in one area may reside closer to crucial services in a neighbouring board. Naturally, rural areas lack the economies of scale of urban areas, and greater cross-ICB co-operation will be required to utilise joint resources most effectively when delivering different services to rural areas that fall within border zones of ICBs.

One area where a collaborative approach between ICBs will be crucial for rural areas in the near future is the current reorganisation of non-emergency patient transport by NHS England, which will shift to ICBs shortly. Although rural areas undoubtedly are being considered as part of this re-organisation, patient transport is already a rural inequality that needs addressing. Putting rural proofing with respect to health care on a statutory footing presents a more concrete way to implement the existing rural-proofing guidance. The need for co-operation between administrative areas and for overall plans to be rural proofed will become more essential, particularly for secondary health services, if teams of specialist clinicians become increasingly consolidated in ever fewer locations.

Can the Minister outline how the Government intend to reduce the inequalities in healthcare access and funding that many rural areas face, and how they will effectively ensure that ICBs adequately rural proof their plans in line with the Government’s own guidance?

Health and Care Bill

Baroness Watkins of Tavistock Excerpts

Committee stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Tuesday 11th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

My Lords, I support the majority of these amendments. I declare my interests as president of the Florence Nightingale Foundation and chair of the HEE review of mental health nursing.

A lot of noble Lords have spoken about mental health in the most glowing terms in the last hour. I am extremely supportive of the amendments in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, and our new Member, the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Birmingham. I have put my name to Amendment 138 on keeping proper data and information on waiting lists for people not with mental health issues but mental illness problems. There are people in our country with severe, enduring mental illness who fail to get early diagnosis because they do not even get on to a waiting list to see a consultant.

I see many of these people in my work with the charitable social enterprise I chair, Look Ahead, which provides housing to people who have suffered homelessness, people with mental health problems and learning disabilities and those discharged from prison—having completed their sentence, I should say. So many of those people have had better mental health care in prison than they ever had in society, because we do not list the number of people trying to access these services. We know that the life expectancy of people with long-term mental health problems is so much lower than that of the majority of people with physical health problems, because of things such as drug-induced psychosis, if it is not treated quickly. Professor Murray of the Institute of Psychiatry has been talking about this since I did my PhD there, 30 years ago, and we have still not resolved it.

I emphasise, as an ordinary person who works and has spent nearly 40 years working on a day-to-day basis either training mental health nurses or working with people with severe enduring mental illness, that these amendments are essential if we are to provide good health services for tomorrow’s population.

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)]

My Lords, I too support this group of amendments, both the parity of esteem words and the funding actions that make it up. I will briefly address the possible objections to it: first, it is not necessary because the Secretary of State already has a duty to maintain parity of esteem; secondly, as I think the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, mentioned, this is culture change and legislation cannot drive that. In this case, actions speak louder than words. Being clear on the financial actions, as the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, are, is a hugely important step on our culture journey.

Even though actions speak louder than words, the words matter too. They particularly matter when, as so many noble Lords have said so eloquently, mental health is so easily forgotten. It is all too easy to forget the hidden pain, anguish and need. I fear it is still far too easy to forget the hidden waiting lists. The words in this group of amendments are just as important as the actions, to make sure that we do not forget and build on the ground-breaking work that many, like the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, have led for decades. We are on that journey, but we are definitely not there. I urge my noble friend to consider and accept these amendments.

Covid-19: PCR and Lateral Flow Test Providers

Baroness Watkins of Tavistock Excerpts

Monday 13th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for suggesting another price comparison website. There is an accreditation scheme, and every time companies are reported to the Government, we look at how to remove them. There is a four-stage process for UKAS accreditation, and sometimes when companies are reported, another one pops up.

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

My Lords, can the Minister say what the average cost to the NHS of both a PCR and a lateral flow test is, so that that can inform people in relation to the cost in the private sector?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I do not have the exact numbers, so I will write to the noble Baroness. On loss-leading services, anything under £15 was removed because it was deemed that that was dishonest or underpriced.

Health and Care Bill

Baroness Watkins of Tavistock Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 7th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

My Lords, I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Birmingham, to this House and enjoyed his erudite speech—and I am supportive of the fluoridisation of water. I draw attention to my interests as outlined in the register, particularly as a registered nurse and chair of a small housing association that specialises in housing for people leaving care.

This Bill is welcomed by many health and care communities, and I support its emphasis on collaboration and integration between mainstream NHS providers, public health, social care, the voluntary sector and, in some cases, the independent sector. This will be essential to meet our health challenges and increase productivity. The Bill refers to patient-focused care provision, yet future success will be achieved only if people take greater responsibility for their own health based on public health advice. For this reason, I suggest that the term “person-centred care” is substituted in many parts of the Bill to emphasise the partnership in care between service users and professionals. How can this House be assured that the structural changes proposed will reduce health inequalities and ensure parity of esteem between mental health, learning disability and physical healthcare services?

There is a concern that in ICBs there may be an overrepresentation of local acute trusts. I support amending board structures to mandate representation for mental health and learning disability providers; a member of the local community to represent users and carers; and a nominee from social services and public health. This will be vital to achieve balanced decision-making and fair allocation of resource.

In 2020 the World Health Organization launched a vision for nursing, with a clear policy committing all nations to increase the proportion and authority of nurses in senior health positions. I hope the Government will consider this in their new structures.

I support proposed amendments to ensure that the Secretary of State must lay regular reports before Parliament outlining the system in place for assessing and meeting the needs of the health, public health and social care workforce in England. Reports should include independently verified workforce numbers—in full-time equivalents, not headcount—and should indicate the proportion who have been trained in the UK and those recruited from overseas. The World Health Organization is clear that while healthcare workers’ migration can be positive, wealthy countries should not be overreliant on recruitment at the expense of lower-income and middle-income countries. Reports should identify the number entering training in the UK and the number of leavers, and should provide information on retention, including examples of best practice.

The Bill introduces the NHS payment scheme, designed to enable the integration of service delivery. To realise this ambition, there must be central prioritisation of early intervention and timely discharge. In August 2021 there were 25,836 days of delayed discharges for mental health services; 32% were attributed to social care and 11% to housing. The proposed payments system may make it easier to prioritise proactive community care, but this priority needs mandating in order to ensure that the new payments scheme drives reductions in delayed transfers of care and does not simply continue to accommodate extra bed days in hospital.

Patient safety and the relationship to safe staffing cannot be overemphasised. Amendments are necessary to promote workplace health and safety, including in community settings; the supply of PPE and other safety equipment; and clear mechanisms for staff to raise and resolve concerns. Staff teams should include relevant skill mix, adequate time for clinical supervision and access to continued professional education in data management, new research findings and interpersonal skills to provide contemporary evidence-based practice. I look forward to working with others in Committee to ensure that amendments concerning the issues that I have raised are considered.

Adult Social Care

Baroness Watkins of Tavistock Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, makes a valid point: we have to look at not only the long-term vision but the short-term issues raised. This is why, on 3 November, we announced the adult social care winter plan for 2021-22. This was developed in conjunction with the NHS and social care stakeholders. We drew on the recommendations of the review of last year’s adult social care winter plan and listened to a number of different stakeholders in setting out the short-term issues.

As the noble Baroness acknowledges, we are the first Government to set out a long-term vision, not just from one electoral cycle to another but for 10 years. We have set out a vision with three years of commitment to specific spending, some of which is a discovery process, because we still have to know what will and will not work, and how to use and integrate technology. By doing that, we have laid down the gauntlet to whatever Government come after us, of whatever political colour, for them to continue to fulfil this vision. It is a vision against which this and future Governments will be measured.

Other politicians from other parties have known about this for many years. The noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, mentioned waiting for 40 years and others have known about our post-war demographic challenge. We have finally grasped the nettle. We are not going to get everything right, which is why we have not laid out a detailed, prescriptive plan for 10 years. We have laid out a vision of integration, making sure that we use the best technology to support people in their own homes, as much as possible. At the same time, we have committed for the next three years. After that, the challenge is for us to work with all stakeholders to deliver that vision.

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

My Lords, I am particularly delighted to see this White Paper and congratulate the Government on publishing it in this timeframe. However, we need to look closely at workforce needs, at the same time as we look at workforce needs for the Health and Care Bill, because there is a real mismatch between the vision we now have and the staffing for that vision. I welcome this opportunity to hear how the Government think we can tackle that and give young unemployed people good opportunities to come into a proper caring profession.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for the conversations that we have had about this, and a number of other issues, as I got to grips with my brief. She makes a very important point. We have to make sure that social care is seen as an attractive career path and not just something unskilled; we know that there are skills involved, such as empathy. There will also be an increased need for digital skills, and people management skills will be handy in other areas. For far too long, social care has been seen as the poor relation of other parts of the health system. By bringing health and social care together, we are sending a signal that our vision is to put them on an equal footing. We are also explaining how we intend to spend over the next three years. We challenge everyone—stakeholders, local authorities, everyone—to come forward and help us develop that vision for the long term, and to hold future Governments to account against that vision.

Covid-19 Update

Baroness Watkins of Tavistock Excerpts

Monday 29th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for the point he just made. If he will allow me, I will take that back and try to get an answer for him.

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

My Lords, I hear from colleagues in South Africa that nasal swabs alone are not as effective at picking up the new variant and that there have been many false negatives reported. I would welcome the Minister’s comment on that, as we are moving to more nasal swabs. I also suggest that it would be more sensible to encourage the use of face coverings in offices and to encourage people to work from home wherever it is feasible in terms of employers, so that the next two weeks can be used by scientists to really identify other problems that might be associated. This would help to safeguard NHS clinical staff as well as hospitals. If people are getting false negatives and then being admitted to hospital, it puts the very staff we need to keep at work at risk.

Covid-19 Update

Baroness Watkins of Tavistock Excerpts

Wednesday 10th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for the question. As noble Lords will know, I see myself as a bit of a civil libertarian. Personally, I have asked a number of questions internally about the whole issue of compulsion. It is a very difficult issue, but I understand the arguments on the other side—that we want patients to feel safe and feel that they are looked after by staff who have been vaccinated. Stakeholder analysis and round-tables came out in favour of compulsion on the Covid vaccine and boosters. When it came to flu, interestingly enough, there was a significant disagreement on the practical timing of the flu vaccine supply and the vast majority of doses being available. We have promised to keep it under review, but that is not mandated at this stage.

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a mental health nurse, as outlined in the register. I am concerned about the unintended consequences of making vaccines mandatory for healthcare staff, despite the fact that I fully support the vaccine and have had three doses myself. It is a relatively small number of healthcare staff who are not vaccinated—I accept that it varies across the country—but is it right to give no authority at all to boards in trusts to decide the best way forward for the minority of staff who do not wish to be vaccinated? I am concerned that there will be unintended consequences associated with a lack of care staff, particularly nurses, in mental healthcare environments, which may result in poorer care for patients than if we carefully supported that small number of staff in working perhaps with patients who do not want to be vaccinated themselves.

Covid-19 Vaccinations

Baroness Watkins of Tavistock Excerpts

Monday 8th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

On the noble Baroness’s first point, about the centres closing at 6 pm, this is the first time that I have been made aware of that. I welcome any feedback about what is working and what is not. This is not necessarily political; we all want it to work, so I welcome any information on that. I will double-check it.

The noble Baroness referred to complacency. It is very interesting when people say that most people are in favour of measures on masks. It is quite often like polling, when we see a difference between stated preferences and revealed preferences. It is claimed that a number of people are in favour of masks and want to wear them, but, when it comes to public transport and the revealed preferences, we see that it depends on the mode of public transport—sometimes take-up is less than 50%. I have said to people, “Make sure you get your boosters”, but maybe we have to take some responsibility for not making it clear that the boosters were important and for not pushing them as much as possible. The first and second vaccines were taken up with such enthusiasm because people wanted to return to as close to normal as possible, but when it came to the booster, it really needed all of us to push it to make sure that more people took it.

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a nurse. Would it be helpful to reinforce the message that some of the most vulnerable people should contact their specialist nurse practitioners, who in many cases are much more obtainable than both consultants and general practitioners? I would really like the Government to emphasise that.

Turning to 12 to 15 year-olds, I declare my interest in that my daughter is a secondary schoolteacher in south London. Anti-vaxxers outside schools are creating a real problem. I understand that the Government have powers to reduce their access within the area of a school. Is this being seriously considered? The uptake of vaccines in the 12 to 15 year-old age group requires the consent of an adult. Therefore, it is imperative that schools are part of that system.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for that really important point: it is about not only consultants and GPs but nurse practitioners. When you go to book a booster jab and look at availability, you might well expect it to be at a hospital or a surgery, but many community pharmacies are offering it. It is important that we have those conversations. I agree with the noble Baroness on the advice that she has given.

I also share the noble Baroness’s concerns about the anti-vaxxers. It is a difficult balance: I believe in freedom of speech, but they should not inhibit people. It is really important that we make the case. As of 2 November, 24% of 12 to 15 year-olds had received their first dose. They will have received it through school. The NHS is also working closely with schools to offer vaccines to young people as soon as parents or guardians consent. We are also expanding our programme of walk-in centres to make sure that we can provide parents with extra choice over where and when their children are vaccinated. The vaccines are safe and will protect children from Covid-19. We repeat this. The current advice is to give the majority of children a single dose, which means that they will be afforded a high level of protection.

On people protesting outside schools, the Government have explained their concerns about that. At the moment, I have no further information. As soon as there is further information, noble Lords will be informed.

Social Care

Baroness Watkins of Tavistock Excerpts

Wednesday 27th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall]

The funding commits us from 2022 to 2025—it is three years’ funding. The point that the noble Baroness makes is that, of course, we are hoping that we can clear as much of the elective backlog as possible. After that, the money will be moved and will focus on social care reforms. On her specific question, I will write to the noble Baroness.

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

My Lords, my question builds on that of the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham. Can the Minister explain how social care is to cope now, when there is a crisis, without a larger allocation of the levy in addition to funds announced, and, in particular, how delayed transfers of care from acute hospitals may be reduced? Should there be central guidance to the NHS to commission social care services to assist in safe rapid discharge?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

In looking at how we reform the adult social care workforce, we have consulted a wide range of stakeholders, not only on what we do from 2022 to 2025 but on what we do in the short term. Further details will be announced soon.