Health and Care Bill (First sitting)

Karin Smyth Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 7th September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Thank you. I call Karin Smyth.

[Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)]

Q I appreciate that people working together and perhaps substantiating some of those informal arrangements might, in theory, do some of what you hope. However, the employers remain the institutions that make up the integrated care boards—that is the effect of the Bill. You have started to talk about the process. Could you perhaps talk a bit more about how that is enforced, what that means in practical terms for employers and how employers might behave? I am partly thinking of one of the trusts in my area, which, a number of years ago, set up a wholly owned subsidiary company, with the benefit for them of different terms and conditions for staff as a way of saving money. That was obviously detrimental to the healthcare system generally because you are competing for the same sorts of staff. We made the trust stop doing that because we wanted the staff to be treated the same. My point is: the employers, the terms and conditions, the benefits and the way that they will attract staff remain the same. The Bill does not make the ICB the employer or the way to deliver those terms and conditions or ways of recruitment. I think it is a theory. Can you convince us otherwise and show how in practical terms the Bill solves some of those problems?

Danny Mortimer: It is absolutely the case that the individual organisations in the NHS, social care, charitable organisations and local authorities that make up the partnership as well as the board will remain separate legal entities. We do not see that it is desirable for the NHS to move from having 250 separate employers to having 42 employers. What we have in the NHS is a set of national terms and conditions. My organisation has a particular responsibility on behalf of the Secretary of State to negotiate those with our trade union colleagues. We see that they work well for the NHS and I detect no movement among my membership to move large scale away from those national terms and conditions, which cover the vast majority of staff who work in the statutory NHS.

What we see with ICSs is that organisations are increasingly coming together to address shared challenges. We observe that those challenges are not about pay and conditions but about supply. They are about working together to think about how to promote a specific area for people to come and work in, whether that is Nottinghamshire or West Yorkshire and Harrogate, where there has been some fantastic work in promoting careers in the sector as a whole. We see people coming together to work with directly elected Mayors around the skills agenda. There has been some really fantastic work, for example, in the west midlands, with health and social care organisations coming together with local authorities. We see similar work and engagement with the Mayor of London on the skills agenda that he is taking forward. Again, that is being done by organisations working together. That helps partners—local authorities are engaging with health and social care as a team rather than dozens of separate organisations. It also helps us promote careers that span the whole range of settings that we operate in and speaks to the particular priorities of our colleagues in social care. We see some really fantastic examples of that in various parts of the country.

Finally, we see a real opportunity to take forward the work that I have just talked to Dr Davies about. Systems, as they look at their services and their knowledge of the things that they are providing in their communities to your constituents, can inform the national plans that Navina described in her answer to Dr Davies. We can have a much greater connection between local priorities and some of the decisions that are made nationally about how we invest longer term in education. Of course, the NHS workforce is about 50% degree educated or degree equivalent. So there are significant investments that the Department of Health and Social Care, the Office for Students and the education sector make in our workforce. Being able to root that in what it is that local services need and how they are developed seems to us like a fantastic opportunity, and would help us to avoid the problems that we have got into in the last couple of decades with pressure points in various parts of our workforce.

Dr Navina Evans: I will build on what Danny has just described. You have given some really good examples of how local employers are coming together in systems to address workforce issues. I would add a bit more about how we do it and how we can do it even better going forward. Health Education England has a role in developing careers and attracting young people—all people—into the health and care workforce. We play a really big part in that. First, we have found that doing that locally, at a very local level with the communities and organisations that really understand their local populations, has been a really good thing to do. Some of the examples that Danny gave have built on that and we will move forward on that.

Secondly, we have structures in which people boards, at integrated care system level and definitely at regional level, now bring collections of the different organisations together. We have systems that are starting to think about themselves as anchor systems, which means that they can influence employment, the economy and the success of local communities.

Finally, the population health issue has been something that we have really woken up to, and we are cognisant of the fact that we have to focus on and rebalance the health and wellbeing of the population. Through the pandemic, we have learned a lot more about where we need to target our efforts to reduce inequalities. That can only be done really well through collaboration at a local level. Organisations such as mine need to work closely with our partners in NHSE, with the Department and with other national organisations to make sure that we support those local efforts to be sensitive to the needs of their particular population. It is bringing the national priorities, principles and policy into life at a very local level by making sure that we have the systems and structures in place to deliver what is needed locally. We had already started working on that—the work is well under way—and the Bill will enhance our ability to get on with doing that.

[Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con)]

Q I want to return to the issue of workforce planning, which obviously is integral to both of your organisations. You have discussed the strategic framework you have been working on, and hopefully that will evolve into a workforce strategy, which is addressed in clause 33 of the Bill. I have tabled an amendment to clause 33 which is to make the workforce report annual rather than once every five years. I think that the pandemic has demonstrated the futile nature of trying to produce a report once every five years, when we know that the nature of the workforce could change radically during that period. Would your organisations agree that it would be better for that report to be produced on an annual basis? Clause 33 states that NHS England and Health Education England

“must assist in the preparation…in this section,”

but only

“if requested to do so by the Secretary of State.”

You have talked about locally led decision making and planning. Do you both agree that we need better co-creation? My amendment covers the fact that a plan should be developed and agreed by stakeholders in particular. Would your organisations welcome this amendment, which would result in an annual workforce strategy and require it to be developed by all other healthcare organisations working in this sphere?

Dr Navina Evans: From HEE’s perspective, we will deliver on the duties that Parliament decides that we ought to deliver. We feel that we have the capacity and the capability. We can organise ourselves to deliver whatever is required of us by the Bill. The work that we do is lithe—it is iterative. We do iterative planning, in a meaningful way, at the national and system level, so we will be able to respond and fit in with whatever is required of us by the Bill and Parliament.

Danny Mortimer: Thank you for the question. Absolutely, there is an opportunity for the Bill to define a wider range of stakeholders. The systems at the centre of the Bill—integrated care boards and integrated care partnerships—are central to that, and their perspectives, as we have just talked about with Ms Smyth, in terms of the needs of their population and the services they need to put in place to respond to them, need to be at the centre of the process that Navina and others would lead on behalf of the Secretary of State. That is the first thing. Secondly, there is an opportunity through those systems to broaden our conversation to include social care as well as health. That is really important to us on this day of all days, in terms of the announcements later.

In terms of the regular appraisal, we absolutely believe that five years is absolutely insufficient for the task. We also believe that it cannot just be about process. It has to be about setting out clear requirements and clear specificity about those requirements over different time periods. There is something about the short-term need, and there is also something about five, 10 and 20 years. It needs to be regular. We have proposed two years because it is a huge amount of work and that feels to us to be a minimum in terms of how regular the perspective could be, but it may well lend itself to an annual update, as you have described.

We also see that organisations such as Health Education England and Skills for Care, which operates in the social care sector, absolutely have the capacity and capability to lead this work. Their way of working, similar to the Department’s way of working throughout the preparation of this Bill, is about engaging, convening and trying to bring stakeholders together to get a broad range of perspectives. That is our experience of the long-term process that Navina and her colleagues are leading on behalf of the Department at the moment. The Bill confirming that would confirm ways of working that we are starting to see develop with stakeholders in a really healthy and constructive way.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Thank you very much.

[Karin Smyth]

Q Welcome to our witnesses. Ms Pritchard, welcome to your new role.

We have just heard some interesting evidence, and I want us to be very specific about our terminology when we refer to integrated care systems, integrated care partnerships and the integrated care board. In your view, who is accountable for the spending in my local area under the new arrangements? Approximately £1.5 billion is spent in the local area. In the new system, who is accountable for that spend?

Amanda Pritchard: Thank you. If I start, Mark can come in and add. In the new proposals, the integrated care board carries the statutory responsibility, on behalf of the NHS, for the allocation of spending, performance management and the delivery of NHS services within the system. That, of course, has a delegated set of responsibilities, as per the current commissioning arrangements, down to individual organisations—be they groups of GPs, hospitals or community services— for the spend within those organisations, but the accountable part of the system is the integrated care board. As the proposals set out, it has a very important relationship with the integrated care partnership, but without the line accountability for the funding flowing through that part of the structure.

[Karin Smyth]

Q That is really helpful and very clear. The chief executive and the finance director of the integrated care board are clearly accountable. To whom are they accountable?

Amanda Pritchard: In the current structure, they are accountable through the NHS—sorry, not the current structure, because you are talking about the future structure. In the proposed future structure, they would be accountable to a combined NHS England and NHS Improvement structure. At the moment, we operate that through seven regions, and then through to the national NHSEI executive. We are, in turn, accountable to Parliament.

[Karin Smyth]

Q So when I have an issue that I want to bring to my local integrated care board’s finance director and chief executive, I will take it through to NHS England and then back to Parliament, of which I am obviously a Member. At what stage does the Secretary of State get involved with my issue?

Amanda Pritchard: We have a clear accountability to Parliament through the Secretary of State in the current structure, and the Bill is not proposing that that will change. The other thing that we should say is that CCGs have a clear accountability to involve the public and patients in their decision making. Again, in the current proposals, that responsibility would transfer through to the new integrated care system, and particularly the integrated care board. While we just talked about formal line accountability, that does not detract from the clear expectation that flows through, that the integrated care board would have accountability to involve the public and to consult with them. The transparency that is expected now of the CCGs and NHS organisations is written into the expectations and would flow through to the expectations of the new integrated care boards.

[Karin Smyth]

Q Can I ask about clause 20, which is about externally financed development agreements? In your view, is there a role in that clause to develop primary care and community estate? I am particularly interested in whether that provides the ability to continue the LIFT arrangements that were undertaken by primary care trusts but not by CCGs.

Amanda Pritchard: I do not believe, although I may ask Mark to come in on the detail, that there is any proposed change to those arrangements. Mark, would you like to pick this one up?

Mark Cubbon: Thank you, Amanda. I am not aware that there is any significant change proposed by the Bill to the arrangements in place at the moment.

[Karin Smyth]

Q So how do we, in the system, ensure the development of primary and community estate? Are we in the queue with the Treasury, behind the 40 or whatever hospitals? Is there any way in which we can develop primary and community estate within the scope of the Bill? If we cannot do that through the Bill, how do we do it?

Amanda Pritchard: I will give you a headline answer, because I think this is really important. Part of what we would welcome in the Bill is that, by working as a system, one of the things that all partners will want to do is to come round the table together to make some of those important decisions about where the investment goes. In particular, if we are thinking about capital, I know there are examples already of where organisations have chosen to invest in community estate, additional diagnostics facilities or other parts of primary care estate. In fact, Mark and I were on a visit a few weeks ago to an ICS where they were telling us about some of the work they have done on that.

Moving to looking at system funding envelopes, particularly around capital, allows much more flexibility about how some of that resource is used in the interests of the whole population and the whole health system, rather than, at the moment, where putting things into slightly more siloed funding arrangements can end up being detrimental to certain parts of the system.

That comes back to some of the guiding principles of why the NHS has welcomed, certainly, the thrust of these proposals where integrated care is concerned, because it is all about building on some of the direction of travel that has been in the NHS for some time about trying to work much more collaboratively together. This helps remove some of the barriers that currently exist, for local systems to do that.

[Karin Smyth]

Q Just to be clear, where would this capital come into the system? Presumably it would come to the ICB, as the accountable body. Where would the capital separately come from?

Amanda Pritchard: Through the existing capital allocation processes. Rather than just going to each individual organisation to then make their own decisions about how they spend it, it would now go through the ICB, so there is a process that allows consideration in the round of how the system spends that money most effectively on behalf of its entire population.

[The Chair]

Thank you. We now go to Jo Gideon.