Health and Care Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Edward Timpson and Chris Skidmore

Committee stage
Tuesday 7th September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Edward Timpson (Eddisbury) (Con)]

Q I want to build on that point about permissiveness and take it a step further in terms of the specification in the Bill around ICBs and ICPs—the boards and partnerships. A lot of us on the Committee have been requested to look carefully at individual parts of the healthcare system. That does have a generality to it, covering mental health, children, palliative care and so on, and their representation is very clear within partnerships and boards. Based on your views around permissiveness and flexibility and the different paces ICSs are currently at, how do you see this? How do we reassure people that their views and the particular parts of the health system they represent will get a fair hearing and that the accountability structures will be in place to make sure they are able to come back if they feel they are not being addressed properly?

Matthew Taylor: That is an important point. Let me be completely open about the conversation within the confederation about this issue, for example. We have a mental health network representing mental health providers. Their preference would be to specify the need to have a mental health leader on the board. We as a confederation recognise that view and represented it, but that is not our view overall. Our view is that, partly because configurations differ from place to place—in some places, mental healthcare and community are together, for example—but for a variety of reasons, we would not want to specify further the membership of those boards. Again, that is to maximise local flexibility.

If people feel their voice is not being heard, then that is something they are going to say. We will have to see how this system evolves, but let us start with—going back to a word used earlier—the permissive regime and see how that goes, because after all it is in the interests of everybody in the local health system that they hear the voices they need to hear.

Saffron Cordery: I agree. This is a thorny issue but I suppose it is one of either, depending on how you look at it, the opportunities or the casualties of creating another level of governance in a local system. When you are thinking about putting collaboration on a statutory footing, you have to surround it with some kind of governance to ensure the effective operation of that body.

It is a tricky issue. You cannot have an integrated care board—the board that will govern how funding flows through and how priorities are agreed, decided and implemented—that is so enormous that it becomes unworkable, but there has to be a clear balance between making sure it is not only the big and the powerful who are represented there, but also all the rights and appropriate interests. There are a number of positions specified in the ICB board arrangements, and it will be interesting and important to see how different ICSs use those roles, particularly the non-executive or wider partnership roles that are specified, in order to have a broad range of voices around the table.

It is worth remembering that many other organisations and structures will be taking part in the ICS arrangements. You will have things like provider collaboratives, which are not in the Bill but feature heavily in the guidance that comes from NHS England and NHS Improvement, which are precisely about organisations working together to deliver on local priorities. Many of those are led by mental health organisations focusing on what they need to deliver.

There are other structures within these arrangements, but no one would say it is ideal. It is not the most ideal solution, but it is very difficult to get to a final configuration that is both workable in terms of numbers and reflects the multiplicity of voices in a locality. It is important to have the right engagement at every single level and the right channels feeding up information and priorities, and to understand what is really important in a system.

Matthew Taylor: Today the Government have been talking about the importance of integration in the context of its announcement on health and social care. One of the big questions is going to be about the powers that are devolved within systems to places, and I think it will be at the place level that we will see service integration. The evolution of place level forms of accountability is an important part of that, and again a reason why it is really important to allow these structures to evolve locally. I suspect that in some areas more power will be held at the system level and less at the place level. In other places, it will be the reverse, with most of the action taking place at place level. That reflects the nature of places, the legacy of those places and the relationships that have built up.

[Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con)]

Q I wanted to turn to workforce planning and your views on clause 33. The NHS Confederation, in its written evidence, has suggested that the five-year period for a strategic review on workforce planning is too long. That mirrors my amendment, which has a crack at this. I have suggested an annual review. It was suggested this morning that two years might be the right time length. I see that the NHS Confederation has suggested three years. I want to get your organisations’ views on what a strategic review should look like, but also on the format and how a strategic review should be undertaken so that it actually works as an act of co-creation, rather than being directed centrally by the Secretary of State on to Health Education England.

Matthew Taylor: My area of expertise before coming to the NHS Confederation was work and the future of work, on which I advised the Government, and one of the things I know from that work is how quickly the world of work is changing. It is impacted by a whole variety of things—not least, of course, substantial technological change. In a world where work is evolving very quickly and population needs are evolving, five years is simply far too long. If it were one year, we would be happy. We have fastened on to two years. That would be the minimum that we would want as a gap between assessments of workforce need.

It is also—to emphasise the point that I think you are making—important that this review gathers evidence from a whole variety of bodies, because an enormous amount of extremely good work is taking place around work. Predictions of workforce need are imprecise, so hearing from a variety of voices is important. This should be an independent process, in which independent expertise is brought to bear; there should be wide consultation with those who think about these issues; and a two-year plan would, I think, be an improvement on what is in the Bill.

Saffron Cordery: We also support this amendment and the work that has been done by the confederation and others on this. There is one other element that I would add to this that supports this perspective. It has been really hard, across NHS workforce planning, to light upon one version of the truth, in terms of workforce numbers. Anything that starts to move towards a collective perspective on workforce needs and workforce planning will be absolutely critical.

Getting an agreed perspective on how we create that figure will be fundamental. In my time working across the health service, there have been many different perspectives on workforce—on the gaps, the numbers who are in roles, and what those roles need to be. It is important to have lots of views, but I think this is also important. Although, as Matthew says, it is not a precise science, we need to light upon a version that is independently agreed, but that we all sign up to as the numbers we are working to.