Health and Care Bill

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Tuesday 18th January 2022 Lords Chamber

Surely it is in everyone’s interests that integrated care systems give due regard to meeting the needs of babies, children and young people, including those with communication needs. These amendments would ensure that that happens and that the significant cost benefits are not only factored in from the outset but realised in the medium to longer term.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a patron of the British Stammering Association; indeed, I am a stammerer myself. I regret that I could not join in at Second Reading. I support all the amendments in this group, as does the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists.

I want briefly to add my support for Amendments 141, 151 and 177. As the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, said, Amendment 141 would improve the lot of some 10% of children in the United Kingdom. That is a large proportion. Those are the ones who have identified speech, language and communication needs, which, as has already been said, affect their life chances in many ways. The way to do this, as the right reverend Prelate said, is to have the vital structure of accountability for their needs being identified and met.

There is a big equality issue here. I remind noble Lords that up to 50% of children in areas of social disadvantage start school with delayed language or another identified communication need. The 2010 Marmot review on health inequalities emphasised that

“giving every child the best start in life … is our highest priority recommendation.”

The review identified reducing inequalities in the early development of physical and emotional health and cognitive, linguistic and social skills as a priority objective, noting communication skills as crucial for “school readiness”. Levelling up is for children too; arguably, it is particularly important for them. The national accountability framework in Amendment 141 must include metrics on speech, language and communication development at the population level and outcomes for children and young people with communication needs.

On Amendment 151, I can do no other than echo the words of the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, with whom I agree entirely.

I strongly endorse Amendment 177, which would put the guidance on a statutory footing. One advantage of this, which should be done for all sorts of reasons, is that it would enable the postcode lottery to disappear or at least be very much reduced. Of course, it ought to include specific guidance on supporting speech, language and communication development at the population level, explaining how the needs of children and young people with communication needs will be met. I hope that the Government will pay attention to this often rather neglected aspect.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 20 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, and in so doing declare my interest, as laid out in the register, as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and a non-executive director of Chesterfield Royal Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.

NHS England defines the better care fund as being there to support

“local systems to successfully deliver the integration of health and social care in a way that supports person-centred care, sustainability and better outcomes for people and carers.”

So why is that not the case for 30% of the population, children and young people, who have the same complex needs and the same need for integration as adults do to help and support them on their journeys? The better care fund has been around since 2014. My guess is that this was an oversight rather than a deliberate means to keep children and young people out. Having looked at examples of what the better care fund can achieve in integration and outcomes for adults, I believe that this oversight needs to be addressed. Children and young people need to be on the face of the Bill.

I think that the Government accept that things need to happen, because we have the children’s social care innovation programme, which is particularly about looking at innovation in social care along with healthcare partners. The problem, however, is that it is a bidding system and it is not for all local authorities. If you win the bid, you can do it. Children and young people across the country deserve and should expect the right to have innovation in integration to improve their outcomes regardless of where they live. It should not be conditional on their local authority being successful in a bid.

I can see no reason why, as the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, said, the Government would not want to do this. It is an oversight in the better care fund. Putting children and young people on the face of the Bill would ensure that they received the integration and better outcomes that adults achieve through the fund.

Health and Care Bill

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 20th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, this has been a really interesting debate and it made me think of Aneurin Bevan’s original vision, which incorporated the concept of dealing with the problem and then secondary prevention in rehabilitation and concepts of convalescence. After this debate, I am tempted to go back and read again In Place of Fear, because it is a very short book but it is worth reading.

There seems to be a theme coming through here really strongly. If we do not integrate these services and pull them together, we will never get not only the primary prevention but the secondary prevention which, as the noble Lord, Lord Black, highlighted, is so important. You do not just fix the problem; you prevent the next set of problems coming along.

I was slightly alarmed to note that in 2018 alone, there were over 6,000 deaths attributed to falls. A lot of those were on stairs. They were just simple trips on steps, yet they resulted in deaths. It took me back to when I worked at the Westminster Hospital, which, of course, is no longer across the road. Somebody tripped on the steps of the Tate and subsequently died from a head injury after hitting the concrete. One sees that at stations and so on, too, and we now see it with these scooters, where people scoot into trees and lampposts.

Anyway, to return to the subject of the amendments, the reason for my Amendment 100 is precisely to promote that rehabilitation and remind everybody that rehabilitation is not just a medical and nursing issue. It involves many different professionals, and volunteers quite often, at different levels. A rehabilitation plan at the ICS level could provide the co-ordination required, across different settings and services, to properly support early discharge from hospital, provide access to multidisciplinary teams and incorporate the psychological support that is needed. At the moment, things are organised in condition-specific medical silos, and we have already heard about the fragmentation of provision.

We need to respond more effectively to the needs of people with long-term conditions. When we come to measure outcomes, it is much easier to immediately measure the outcomes of an intervention. The outcomes from long-term secondary prevention are much more difficult to measure and quantify, particularly in a population that has multiple pathologies. So there has been poor data collection in part because it has been very difficult.

A simple example is that NICE guidelines suggested that over 1 million people with COPD every year should be referred for pulmonary rehabilitation, but only 15% are referred. We need to understand why. These are people who are breathless. They are getting chest infections and becoming oxygen dependent—so the consumption of NHS resources goes up. After a stroke, people have very marked rehabilitation needs in many different areas. That may be physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech and language therapy and so on, going much more widely.

We also have a problem with our housing, because many people are not in accommodation that is suitable for them to go to when they are discharged from hospital. It has been estimated that there are 10,000 people in hospital at the moment who do not have a suitable home to go back to—hence the problem of where they go after hospital. So it is not only about providing a social care workforce to go in. We have already debated last week the problem of housing.

I do want to speak specifically to Amendment 51A in my name and the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly. That is about having responsibility for every person present in an area. If we take the south-west, which is dependent on tourism, it goes from relatively low populations to absolutely bursting at the seams with holidaymakers. We have all seen it. These areas have an additional problem: when people are on holiday, their guard is down, they are less vigilant about what they do and they are less risk averse. Going back to falls, they are much more likely to have a fall or an accident. People fall off cliffs, fall down surfaces and so on. All of a sudden, in the tourist season, these people are at higher risk of something going wrong. They often go away and forget to take their medication, or they take something that interferes with it and end up with different side-effects and so on. They put a huge pressure on the emergency services in the area, so I am quite concerned at the way the funding might flow, in the way this Bill is written. We could inadvertently find that some areas are incredibly pushed at certain times of the year because of the way the population moves. I hope that will be taken into consideration.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, following the impressive, high-calibre tour d’horizon from the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, I rise to support the importance of proper and full rehabilitation as in Amendment 100, again supported by the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists. Perhaps I should have declared, at my last intervention in Committee, that I speak as a vice chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Speech and Language Difficulties—I apologise.

Very briefly, an annual plan, as in Amendment 100, would ensure that rehabilitation is explicitly integrated. Rehabilitation spans many disciplines, as the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, said. It is what enables those who have degenerative diseases, strokes, cancer, autism and learning difficulties, to name only a few, to communicate—how essential is that for even minimal well-being?—as well as helping people to, for instance, swallow without choking and stay alive. As ever, it is the vulnerable who suffer when these structural underpinnings to ensure joined-up, consistent care are not there. I hope the Government will adopt these amendments.

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)]

My Lords, first, I apologise for arriving a little late for this debate. I hope that your Lordships will allow me to add my voice of support to this group of amendments.

We all come to this Bill with the same intentions and belief that collaboration and integration are the future for a health and care system. This group of amendments tackles the uncomfortable reality that, despite everyone’s best intentions—both in our NHS and in local government social care and even in the private sector—to collaborate and deliver integrated care, we are not doing that. A number of these amendments practically point at ways in which we can move from the rhetoric to practical change.

I particularly support Amendment 101B, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Layard. As a great economist, he is pointing us in the direction of an economic structure and nudge that will force us on to a path to do what we have all talked about for a long time, which is to create parity of esteem between mental and physical health. We debated the importance of mental health in great detail last week, so I do not wish to repeat that, but I want to add my voice to that of the noble Lord in supporting his amendment because it is very practical.

By creating a ratchet that gets us on to a path whereby inch by inch—week by week, month by month and year by year—we start to close the gap between physical and mental health provision, we would start practically on the path that we want to go on without creating a funding hole. This would allow the NHS and our overall health and care system to go step by step at an achievable pace, while recognising that we come out of the Covid pandemic with such enormous physical health waiting lists that achieving parity of esteem will be even harder than it was two years ago, so it is even more important that we force a mechanism in. The second element of this amendment would also force outcome measurement.

This is a very smart and simple amendment. I know that my noble friend the Minister cares deeply about this agenda, as does the Secretary of State, and I urge them to adopt it.

Health and Care Bill

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Monday 24th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bradley (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak on this group of amendments, and I declare my health and higher education interests, as in the register—and, specifically, my honorary fellowship of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists. We have had some excellent speeches, and some forensic analysis, of these amendments, which are so important to ensuring that the workforce is at the centre of the reform programme under the Bill. I cannot match those contributions, so I do not intend to.

However, I would still like to support Amendments 172 and 214, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, to which I have added my name. The noble Baroness spoke eloquently to those amendments, recognising, among other things, the crucial role that allied health professionals play in the delivery of healthcare. It is worth emphasising that allied health professionals are the third largest section of the health workforce, supporting people of all ages with a range of diagnostic and therapeutic interventions both within and beyond health and social care settings. Their contribution can often be overlooked in a narrative that frequently focuses only on the role of doctors and nurses—however important those clearly are.

As we have heard, Amendments 172 and 214 are designed to address those issues. I shall comment particularly on the role of the speech and language therapy workforce; I am grateful to the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists for its briefing on this matter. There are around 19,500 speech and language therapists in the UK, many of whom have a portfolio career and work part-time. It is estimated that about two-thirds spend at least some of their working time in the National Health Service. Those not working in, or employed by, the NHS may work for local authorities, in schools, in the justice sector—in which I have a particular interest—with speech and language therapists becoming a key part of criminal justice liaison and diversion teams, in the third sector and in independent practice.

However, as already noted, these settings are not represented in current workforce planning. This risks not enough speech and language therapists being trained to meet current and future demand. In turn, this risks people of all ages with communication and swallowing needs not being able to access the speech and language therapy they and their families desperately require. Crucially, there is already a significant backlog identified, comprising unmet need and increased demand—that increased demand exacerbated by the pandemic.

From initial discussions with speech and language therapy services, it is estimated that a minimum increase of 15% is required in this skilled workforce, whereas in recent years the profession has grown by only 1.7% net per year. Amendment 172 would mean that the duty to report by the Secretary of State would include the whole health and care workforce, not only those directly employed by the NHS in England, and Amendment 214 would ensure that workforce planning takes into account the experience and expertise of the whole social care workforce by establishing a workforce board in every ICB area.

For speech and language therapists, establishing an advisory workforce mechanism would help to address current weaknesses of workforce planning in the country. In turn, this would support better service planning and delivery, ensuring that there are sufficient speech and language therapists to meet current and future patient need. I strongly support these amendments, which recognise the value of allied health professionals across many services, who will play a crucial role in the integration of care, which is the purpose of this Bill.

Since the debate has picked up Amendment 285 on the proposal to establish an office of health and care sustainability, I add my voice in support. I was a member of the ad hoc Select Committee on the Long-term Sustainability of the NHS, so ably chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Patel. It was one of that report’s recommendations, and our key recommendation, and we will pick up that debate on another group. In the light of the comments already made on that issue, I recommend our recommendation to this Committee as we develop our thoughts on this Bill.

I hope that the Minister will give a very positive response to ensuring that the role of our allied health professionals is embedded in the plans that will come forward, crucially, on the workforce in our health and care system.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

I add my support for Amendments 172 and 214, speaking as a vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Speech and Language Difficulties and a patron of the British Stammering Association. These amendments, which again have the support of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, would do much to safeguard the position of that now rare commodity— speech and language therapists. As has been said by both noble Lords who tabled the amendment, they do not all work in the NHS.

The view of the Department of Health and Social Care is that speech and language therapists should be added to the shortage occupation list, because the profession is facing a range of pressures, including increasing demand in mental health in particular. The NHS long-term plan identified speech and language therapy as a profession in short supply. The need for those therapists must be taken account of in workforce planning.

Similarly, Amendment 214 provides an incentive to ensure that there are enough speech and language therapists to meet current and future demand, which is just not the case at present. I remind noble Lords that meeting communication needs, as well as ensuring the ability to swallow safely—both at risk from a wide range of conditions—are an essential component of well-being, and often safety itself. I hope that the Government will look favourably on these amendments.

[Baroness Neuberger (CB)]

My Lords, most of what needs to be said about this group of amendments, which I support, has been said, and said brilliantly well—it has been a wonderful debate. However, I would like to make one more key point. I chair University College London Hospitals Foundation NHS Trust and Whittington Health NHS Trust. In the last two years, during Covid, much of my time has been spent not in your Lordships’ House but walking around both of those institutions, saying thank you and listening to my exhausted staff.

One of the key reasons for putting the issue of reporting to Parliament on workforce planning into the Bill is that our staff—not just their organisations but the individuals themselves—want it to be there. They know what the issues are; they live with the shortages and they know that it has not been thought through. My noble friend Lord Stevens made that very clear: it has not been thought through. If they are not taking early retirement, as some are, they are living with the consequences. We could and should do so much better for them, and for the long term—and our staff know that. For their sake, if for no other, we must put this on the face of the Bill.

Health and Care Bill

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Report stage
Tuesday 1st March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to the amendments in my name and to support those of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, who earlier described the need to standardise the knowledge and experience of commissioners, given the potential significance of their decisions.

The Government rightly suggest that there must be some flexibility so that integrated care board membership best reflects the competences needed to commission for local populations. However, unless regulations stipulate essential criteria for members’ collective skills, knowledge and experience, we risk falling into old habits of medical paternalism. That will undermine efforts towards more integrated, holistic care and mental health needs may be given cursory regard. The voices of nurses—as so ably outlined by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle—and other professionals will not be heard.

I would like to share with the House a well-known quote in organisational management: “Every system is perfectly designed to get the result it gets”. We now have the opportunity to safeguard the diversity of experience in each integrated care board by establishing a minimum standard, imposed either by regulation or by statutory guidance, to ensure the system gets the result that best meets commissioners’ needs for local patients and populations across the country.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, as well as supporting Amendments 9 and 12 and the rest of the group, I would like briefly to add my support for Amendment 31 in my capacity as patron of the British Stammering Association. This amendment is very much welcomed by the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, for all the reasons that we set out in Committee. It would do much to improve the expertise available for these damaging difficulties with the basic human need to communicate and the capacity to swallow, so I hope the Government adopt it—I am sure they will, because it is a government amendment. I am very grateful.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, before the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, speaks, I congratulate her and the Minister on Amendment 31. I also want to ask a question. It very much looks as if the integrated care board is marking its own homework, because the duty to keep the experience of members under review is placed on an integrated care board. It is then for the integrated care board itself to make a judgment as to whether it

“lacks the necessary skills, knowledge and experience”.

Quite clearly, any board that has already appointed a group of members is almost certain, in undertaking its review, to come to the conclusion that it was altogether wise in appointing the members with the balance it did. Who is going to monitor this? Who is going to check?

What if you are a local nursing body concerned that nursing issues are not being debated and reflected enough within an integrated care board? What do you do? Who do you go to? As far as I can see, apart from judicial review proceedings there is absolutely no way you can get any change. That is why—and I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, for her work on this—you need amendments like my noble friend Lord Bradley’s to make some specification in relation to those critical areas where it is essential that the board has members with the relevant experience.

My second point for the Minister is this. In introducing her Amendment 9, my noble friend Lady Thornton essentially said that the Bill already lays out constraints on integrated care boards in relation to potential conflicts of interest. All she seeks to do is to extend that to sub-committees of the integrated care board, including place-based committees, which will commission a huge amount of health service provision in future. For the life of me, I cannot see how those sub-committees can be constituted under any different principle from that of the integrated care board itself. Unless the Minister really comes up with a convincing answer on this, I think the House should make its views clear.

Health and Care Bill

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Report stage
Tuesday 1st March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I added my name to the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, and echo the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, on the Minister’s offer in Committee to go back to see how the potential dominance of acute trusts could be mitigated by ensuring that the voice of primary care was heard loud and clear in the various decision-making bodies.

It is a pity that it is a very late hour, because primary care warrants a much wider debate, given the challenges it undoubtedly faces. We are all aware of the workforce issues, such as the reluctance of many GPs to take on partnerships and that so many GPs will do only part-time work, partly because of the pressures. It is because of those challenges and because primary care is so valued in this country that we need some assurances that the people running the new system being introduced through this legislation will be concerned with and listen to primary care.

It is somewhat ironic. The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, is not here any more, but in a sense, we are seeing a transformation from what he hoped would be a GP-led system through clinical commissioning groups to one which looks very strongly acute care-led in the integrated care boards. As someone who was spent quite a lot of my time in the health service around acute trusts, I do not particularly worry about acute trusts being listened to, because we depend on them so much. We really need assurance that integrated care boards will take primary care seriously.

Finally, whatever concerns and reservations we on this side of the House had about clinical commissioning groups, some GPs undoubtedly rose to the challenge of leadership within them. I should be very concerned if they were lost from the new arrangements. It would be good to know that the Government recognise that and will ensure that a place is found for them in the new system.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to support Amendments 30 and 34. On Amendment 30, I echo the widespread concern of the professional bodies and expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, that rehabilitation should be a core service in the NHS. It is inseparable from healing, and healing is often impaired if rehabilitation is not there.

On Amendment 34, it will be important to know whether the proposed integrated health boards will be in contact with services outside the NHS where health can be a critical factor, such as education and criminal justice. As we said in Committee, many speech and language professionals are not NHS employees. How will they be brought into the integrated system?

[Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 62 in my name and those of the noble Baronesses, Lady Hollins and Lady Walmsley, and the noble Lord, Lord Jones of Cheltenham. I thank them, and the Alzheimer’s Society and Alzheimer’s Research UK, for their support of this amendment.

People with dementia will be one of the largest groups of people to see the benefits of the integration of health and social care services and, therefore, the benefits from the Bill. Currently, there are 900,000 people living with dementia in the UK and, without a disease-modifying treatment available after diagnosis through the NHS, they get the majority of their support through the social care system.

This amendment relates to Clause 21, which ensures that integrated care partnerships prepare an integrated care strategy. These new strategies will be a powerful way to bring together various currently disparate bodies to work towards the same aims. Topics discussed within these strategies will be given consideration across the health and social care systems, consideration that too often people living with dementia have lacked, leaving them falling through the cracks between the various systems. This amendment therefore suggests that each strategy should explicitly consider the needs of people living with dementia. There are two areas where integration could provide particular benefits, which I will touch on briefly.

The first is diagnosis. A diagnosis is incredibly important for people living with dementia, as it allows them to plan for the future, arranging their housing and care needs, putting themselves forward for clinical trials and ensuring that they have first access to the most innovative treatments, while also unlocking access to vital extra support in the short term. This does not just help the individual. By providing the right support at the right time, we can reduce pressure on the NHS. That is why NHS England rightly has a target that two-thirds of all people living with dementia will have received a diagnosis. This was consistently met from 2015 until the pandemic. As people visited their GPs less frequently, clinicians were diverted to other areas and individuals had little access to memory clinics. The rate dramatically fell from 67.6% in January 2020 to just 61% in January 2022. This has meant that, according to NHS data, an extra 35,000 people are now living in the dark about their dementia status. As we address the backlogs in elective treatment and cancer care, it is vital that we also tackle the backlog in diagnosis of dementia. To do so, we must have clear strategies in place, at local and national level.

I am proud that the UK is seen as a world leader in dementia research, as many noble Lords know very well. However, there are still barriers to us reaching our potential, including a lack of participants for research. This is not because there is low interest in participating in research among the public. According to Alzheimer’s Research UK, 69% of the public would be willing to take part in dementia research. However, 81% did not know how to volunteer. The NHS, as a single health system, has many advantages which give it great potential for data sharing between research and clinical practice, connecting those who want to take part in studies with those conducting the studies.

A valuable report recently released by the All-Party Dementia Group, Fuelling the Moonshot, recommended that all newly diagnosed patients receive a letter from the NHS within three months of diagnosis, explaining how they can take part in dementia research. Integrating dementia research with integrated care partnerships will provide other benefits. The benefits should, and would, flow in both directions. While research can benefit from better access to participants, it should also ensure that innovation, whether in treatments or models of care, can reach people living with dementia.

Health and Care Bill

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Report stage
Thursday 3rd March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevens of Birmingham (CB)]

We await insight from the Minister himself on that point; it is indeed, of course, what the chairman of the cross-party Health and Social Care Committee, Jeremy Hunt, suggested in the House of Commons. We have an immediate litmus test before us, which should help us answer the question posed by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. As your Lordships will remember, we noted in Committee the fact that, just 10 weeks before the start of the financial year, when it should have been planning 10 years out, Health Education England still did not have its operating budget for the year ahead. My understanding—I hope to be corrected by the Minister—is that, certainly, as of 10 am, Health Education England still does not have its workforce operating budget for just 29 days’ time. That is precisely because of a set of behind-the-scenes discussions—no doubt courteous, but nevertheless fervent—between the Department of Health and Social Care on the one hand and the Treasury on the other.

Health Ministers are more sinned against than sinning on this, frankly, and in that sense this amendment will strengthen their hand. I suspect that, privately, they will welcome the mobilisation of your Lordships to support their negotiating case. The very fact that Her Majesty’s Government oppose this amendment is proof positive that it is needed. We need it because we need to look beyond the end of our noses. To vote against this amendment would be to cut off our noses to spite our faces.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, this whole group is worthy of government action, and I support Amendments 80 and 81 in respect of speech and language therapists. The NHS Long Term Plan itself states that speech and language therapists are a profession in short supply. The Department of Health and Social Care, in its submission to the Migration Advisory Committee’s review of the shortage occupation lists, argues that speech and language therapists should be added to them because of the pressures facing these professions, particularly in relation to mental health.

The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, for whose advice I am grateful, suggests that a minimum increase in the skilled workforce is required in the region of 15%. In recent years, the profession has grown by 1.7% in a year. The Government themselves recognise that they are clearly not delivering the speech and language therapy workforce that we need. No national assessment has been undertaken of the demand and the unmet need for speech and language therapy, which, I remind noble Lords, is essential for people to be able to communicate. Will the Government accept Amendments 80 and 81 or explain otherwise how they plan to improve workforce planning so that speech and language therapy is no longer a profession in too short supply?

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I will be exceptionally brief and make two very quick points, but first I need to apologise for, when I spoke earlier, omitting to mention my registered interest as a non-executive director of the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust.

I very strongly support Amendment 80, moved so ably by the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, and pressed so very cogently by the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, and others. It is absolutely fundamental to everything that the Bill is designed to achieve, and we will not achieve those things unless the workforce is addressed.

In relation to Amendment 111 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, I say that it is so important that we have a review into the distribution of GPs in England. I was very concerned when we debated in Committee the huge variation in list numbers in different parts of the country. The biggest lists were in the most deprived areas. If you track that back to the debate we were having on health inequalities, where there was a huge consensus across the House, it is clear that we are never going to fundamentally tackle health inequalities unless we have far greater equality in things like the size of GPs’ lists.

Health and Care Bill

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Report stage
Monday 7th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 114 in the absence of my right reverend friend the Bishop of London, who is having to self-isolate due to having tested positive for Covid—which seems to be a bit of a theme of the first two amendments.

Members of the House will know that my noble friend is very involved, and was very involved in Committee, in speaking about health inequalities. Today, we want to share and highlight the strength of social prescribing and especially the role of faith organisations in helping to deliver this. There is evidence from the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing and the National Academy for Social Prescribing. But everyone who sits on these Benches would be able to tell you stories of where faith communities and local charities aid and assist with health improvements through activities which happen through them. Through cultural, creative, art, nature—all sorts of—interventions, people find health relief and are moved forward in improving their health.

My right reverend friend the Bishop of London herself runs a health inequalities action group, which she shares with six different faith leaders, healthcare workers and people with lived experience of health inequalities. They all highlight the role of faith organisations as legitimate community assets in delivering social prescription. An example is Art is Freedom, an art exhibition which features the work of survivors of modern slavery, curated by the crisis charity Hestia, which works closely with the Salvation Army. Not very far away from here, in Hackney, some churches run an intervention called Psalms & Stretches—a meditative form of gentle exercise which uses breathing, stretching and strengthening.

There is growing knowledge among multifaith groups—of all faiths—and volunteer organisations of informally doing work to reduce health and social inequalities, so our ask is simply that local communities are included in the solutions towards personal and community health. Civil society and all the people and groups that make it up are doing work that is worth learning from, and we need to consult them, as is mentioned in subsection (3) of the new clause proposed by the amendment. Alongside the professionals, they have insights to offer, so I hope that the Minister will consider the amendment and join us in creatively tackling health inequalities and improving population health through social prescribing.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, I warmly but very briefly support these proposed innovations in fortifying and enhancing health, not least in their application to the treatment of dementia. Will the Minister consider the work of Arts 4 Dementia, whose aim is empowerment through artistic stimulation, and which promotes social prescribing of arts and well-being activity at the onset of dementia, including through its seminal report, A.R.T.S. for Brain Health?

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to offer support from the Green group for both these amendments. In Committee, I spoke extensively on the issues around creative health, and I will not repeat any of that. I just note that, looking at the Government’s response, I get no sense that they have got the point that this is not an additional “nice to have”—something that is done after you have done the medical stuff—this has to be a core part of allowing people to get well again, and keeping people well.

On Amendment 184ZB, it is interesting that the Covid pandemic has seen a really large increase in private medical provision, such as testing on our high streets, et cetera. Now that they are there, those businesses will be looking out for different procedures to keep them going, and it is really important that we have full transparency about the advice that people are getting at those kinds of places.