NHS England Funding: Announcement to Media

Karin Smyth Excerpts

Monday 25th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. We have rightly set out what we are doing to increase numbers through recruitment, but as she says a key part is retaining the skilled and dedicated workforce. We need to recognise that there is not a separate workforce who have been dealing with the pandemic and who will now to be dealing with elective recovery—they are the same NHS workforce, who will all have been working very hard. We have to be sensitive to the fact that they need the time to recover physically and emotionally after the pandemic. That is what we are seeking to do.

We are being realistic in setting expectations about how long it will take to clear the backlog. It is right that we do that with the public, because we must look after our workforce. One of the single biggest things we can to do help with retention is to be flexible with our workforce—recognising, exactly as my right hon. Friend says, the need for flexibilities, not just for female members of our workforce but for all our workforce, as well as the need for additional staff to come through and help ease the burden.

[Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)]

The waiting lists are now the longest we have ever seen, plus there are the 7 million people who did not come forward during the pandemic. That means that the validation of the lists is a mammoth task. The clerical validation is quite simple—phoning people up to see whether they still live at the relevant address, whether, sadly, they have died or whether they have moved on—but the clinical validation is now really important. What conversations is the Secretary of State having with clinical leaders about the criteria being used to validate these lists? Crucially, how are local people going to be involved in how and why clinical decisions are being made about who will be treated and in what order?

[Edward Argar]

The hon. Lady and I have spent many days in recent weeks sitting opposite each other in the Health and Care Bill Committee, and she knows of what she speaks given her background in the NHS. She is right about the validation of those lists and then the prioritisation, but although it is absolutely vital that we ensure that patients and those on the waiting lists are kept informed and included in the decisions and discussions about their care, her key point was about clinical decision making. In this context, the decision making and prioritisation must be clinically led.

I have spoken with the Royal College of Surgeons and others of the royal colleges about how we approach the issue. We should look at a number of factors. Is it possible with these new approaches to deal quickly with a large number of high-volume, low-complexity treatments that impact on quality of life? Equally, there are very complex treatments for which a month, a week or even a day longer can lead to more adverse clinical outcomes.

It is right that we go for clinical prioritisation. Although I am keen that we should keep people informed and engaged as participants in the process, it is vital that we see this issue as clinically led.