Integrated Care

Debate between Cheryl Gillan and Paul Williams

Thursday 6th September 2018 Westminster Hall

[Dame Cheryl Gillan (in the Chair)]

I remind colleagues that interventions are meant to be short. I hope Members will be able to keep them a little briefer.

[Dr Williams]

I thank my hon. Friend for her informed comments. I agree with her. We need a cross-governmental approach, particularly for children. There is a glaring absence of a cross-governmental strategy that would enable us to focus on all the things that have an impact on children.

The third area I want to mention is legislation. Under current rules, clinical commissioning groups will remain the statutory accountable bodies, even as the relationship between commissioners and providers starts to evaporate. At the moment, STPs, where the providers and commissioners are getting together, are making decisions—often behind closed doors—which are then rubber-stamped by the accountable bodies, which are the CCGs. That does not feel to me like particularly good governance. Legislation needs to follow the new provision arrangements.

We might also need to consider legislation to improve information sharing. The duty to share information—the eighth Caldicott principle—is often forgotten. In my experience the biggest barrier to integration is the fear that NHS providers have about sharing information with other parts of the system, and their resistance to do so. We are not necessarily doing enough in legislation to protect that duty to share information in the interests of providing good-quality clinical care.

The current situation on procurement is very difficult for CCGs. The law says that many services have to be procured if they are over a certain value. CCGs, as small organisations with accountability for their local pot of NHS funds, genuinely fear legal challenge. When they ask lawyers they are, unsurprisingly, advised that they have to follow the law, but the political and NHS England leadership strategy is to integrate care, which often cannot be achieved when care is fragmented by putting services out to tender, and provided by numerous different organisations. Many CCG governing bodies want and need to be cautious. They are just not going to take the risk given the current legislative framework.

Quite simply, if we, as elected politicians, want the NHS to collaborate, we should legislate for collaboration. In my view, the Health and Social Care Committee should be an enabler of that process. We would like to provide pre-legislative scrutiny, but we would like first to ask the health and care community what changes in the law would enable them to achieve their goal of providing integrated care to patients. I would like to know whether the Minister agrees with that proposition.

My fourth point is that integrated care providers should be NHS organisations—a recommendation the Committee made in its report. There is a well-founded concern in the health and care community that, under current legislation, private companies might bid to win contracts to provide significant chunks of our health services. That concern could be alleviated if it were made clear that integrated care partnerships need to be NHS bodies. In their response to our report, the Government did not accept that recommendation, arguing that ICP contracts could be held by GP-led organisations. It would be a very good thing to have GP-led organisations running primary and community care and other parts of the health service, but I see no reason why those GP-led organisations cannot be NHS organisations.

It is a barrier to progress in the NHS that there are not community-based NHS organisations that GPs can lead and work for. I urge the Government to look seriously at the recommendations in the Institute for Public Policy Research report “Better health and care for all”, published in June, which suggests the creation of integrated care trusts in communities and a right to NHS employment within such organisations, which would provide all non-hospital care in an area.

My final point is about leadership. My hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire (Rosie Cooper), who is a member of the Health and Social Care Committee but cannot be here today, has done significant work shining a light on leadership failures within the NHS. Integrated care is possible only if we have the best and most talented managers in the NHS. As was evident in the failure of management in Liverpool Community Health NHS Trust highlighted by Dr Bill Kirkup, we are far from achieving excellence and need to be certain we have the right mechanisms in place to ensure that we have only the best and the brightest. Will the Minister assure us that the Kark review will be expansive in its remit and that those NHS leaders charged with fixing the mess in Liverpool have been consulted for their expert views?

To conclude, the purchaser-provider split has not always achieved the best NHS care for patients. I welcome the step towards integrated care, but I do not think it will succeed when the legislation promotes, and sometimes mandates, competition. There is political will—certainly from the cross-party Committee—to work with the NHS and care system, including the NHS assembly, on proposals to change legislation, keep integrated care providers within the NHS, improve governance and remove mandatory competition. I hope the Minister will respond positively to those concerns. Integrated care has the potential to transform the lives of millions of patients in our health service. I commend the Committee’s report, and I thank the Government for the changes they are making.