Health and Care Bill (Third sitting)

Hywel Williams Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 9th September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Could I just ask you to keep your answers to within the scope of the Bill, please? Also, I ask if we could perhaps have more succinct answers. I still have several people who want to ask questions and we do not have a lot of time to get them in. I intend to call the Front Bench spokespeople at about 10 minutes to 12. I now move to the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams), but if we could keep to the confines of the Bill, that would be good.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

Q This question is specifically for Sara. You said in your response to the Bill that you agree with the Select Committee recommendation for an annual report on workforce shortages. The workforce move, specifically between England and Wales, very freely and the Governments of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own appreciation of workforce shortages and how to respond. For example, after a long campaign, we now have a medical school being set up in Bangor in my constituency. Anyway, the point of my question is how do you see the Governments in those parts of the United Kingdom being able to feed into the process without ceding their power to decide for themselves? How do you see it going?

Sara Gorton: This is a matter of no small significance to organisations such as my own that have membership across the UK. That ability to understand and translate the statistics that we get from one environment in the UK to another, and understand how that feeds through and get a whole picture of it, is really difficult at the moment. That is not just for the basic nuts and bolts of who is in the workforce at the moment, doing what job—the training plans, the workforce planning, and other aspects of workforce are really difficult to compare.

The short answer is that we would like to be involved in the interpretation, assuming that we do get that amendment through and the workforce reporting is on a more frequent basis than five years. We would like to be involved in the conversation about what that looks like, and how it can answer some of the issues that you have raised about feeding into a UK-wide perspective as well.

[Hywel Williams]

Q You see that in Wales, acting through the Welsh Government, so would you be seeking direct access regarding Welsh issues to the Government here in Westminster?

Sara Gorton: That is not something we have considered in the passage of the legislation so far, but we are certainly willing to talk about it in future.

[Hywel Williams]

Q Lastly—if I may, Chair, very briefly—a great number of people from Wales receive treatment in England, mainly from north Wales. They go to Merseyside and Manchester, and sometimes to London as well, so I am sure you would be in favour of the health bodies in those areas taking due regard of not only the health needs of their own population, but those of the population that comes in from Wales.

Sara Gorton: There are all sorts of workforce aspects that are very relevant to the England and Wales environment. The joint systems we have for pay and pensions, and workforce planning as well, all need to be factored in, but lots of work on the detail of the workforce reporting is needed.

[Hywel Williams]

Thank you.

[Dr James Davies]

Q I am interested in Unison’s position on the social care aspects of the Bill, and in particular the CQC inspection that is proposed, and also the data collection powers, please.

Sara Gorton: That is not an area of the Bill that we focused on. Our main focus is on extending the provisions of the provider selection regime—the procurement. I can do some more work and send in something.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Thank you very much. We have about 10 minutes, and three people have indicated that they want to ask questions, so if we could direct our questions to one person and keep questions and answers brief, that would be very helpful, because I would like to include everybody.

[Hywel Williams]

Q I have a question for Pat. You have indicated some concern about the new powers regarding professional regulators and the fact that there may be changes, including the dismissal of regulators and that sort of thing, through secondary legislation. Given that those bodies are UK-wide, do you think that the Senedd, the Welsh Government in Cardiff, and the other Governments should have some input into those sorts of decisions about professional regulators?

Pat Cullen: We have had some thoughts about this across the countries—and we can learn from all of the countries, really. Of course, you will know from my accent that I come from Northern Ireland, and our regulator is a four-country regulator. In relation to the standards that are referred to within the Bill, I think our royal college will play an important role in terms of working with our regulator to look at some of the devolved responsibilities and the role that we can play in setting standards for our profession, and assisting and supporting our regulator in the setting of those standards right across the country, and obviously the other countries as well.

More recently, we have just brought out our nursing workforce standards, which apply across the four countries, and we had significant engagement in those right across the four countries. If you look at those standards being aligned in the new Bill and reading across to the new Bill, working across with our regulator and having more powers devolved to a royal college will enhance the regulator’s response to standards and the applicability of those standards, and their implementation across the countries.

[The Chair]

Thank you very much, Mr Williams. I now turn to Edward Timpson.