National Health Service (Mandate Requirements) Regulations 2017

Lord Beecham Excerpts

Wednesday 6th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I declare all my interests as a clinician. I worry that, if we keep on changing the way that we collect data, we have no way of monitoring what is happening. One thing about the figures as they are at the moment is that they are monitoring process. In addition to that, there must also be monitoring of outcomes—both clinical outcomes and outcomes in terms of the patient experience.

I worry that, if we start saying that the demography has changed and we have an elderly population, it makes it sound as if we are blaming people for living well and living longer, which we must not do. Actually, if people remain well, they are not a drain on the NHS at all. One of the most important predictors of poor outcomes is loneliness. If we have a population of people who are kept relatively well and mobile, they look after each other in communities. Good work on compassionate communities is happening around the UK already.

When we look at this question of targets and what the Government are doing, a worrying message is being sent. The Royal College of Emergency Medicine contacted me yesterday because its members are worried that they will not be able to cope with winter pressures. They are going into the winter with absolutely no wiggle room at all. They are at capacity. There has also been a change in the way that people behave. For an urgent appointment, they go through A&E, so the number of emergency department attendances has gone up as well.

In that group are those people who have been waiting for a time and during that time they have deteriorated. As they have deteriorated, something else has happened and they collapse—a bit like a stack of cards. Multiple problems arise and then those become more complex for the NHS. So it is not as if people are stable during their 18-week wait. If they have a disease that is progressing, they may well be deteriorating. Even worse for them, if the diagnosis in the original referral was wrong, they may need a complete review of their diagnosis. So simply talking about treating them is not correct.

My other concern is this: at what point does the clock start ticking? In some clinical commissioning groups, we are seeing groups being set up to look at the so-called appropriateness of the referral on paper. As a clinician, that worries me greatly, because I do not see how one can assess on paper. I know from many years of looking at referrals coming through on paper that they are only a very rough guide. Too often, I might see a referral that does not sound urgent and the patient in front of me should have been seen yesterday. Another one might sound urgent but actually is not. There is a real worry that, if we fiddle around with when the clock starts to tick, some people who really need to be seen urgently will be in a no-man’s zone before they are even properly referred because there have been delays. We hear about delays in access to primary care as well. The delay in being seen by a GP must be added on to any delays in being referred.

We also need to remember that, when we talk about 10 years ago, medicine has changed enormously. There are a large number of procedures now that, if they are done early, can be done in out-patients or as day cases. The days of needing to be admitted are not there, so that is all the more reason why we should be able to get more patients through more quickly if they are seen earlier.

I have a real worry that, as has been expressed very well by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, this flies in the face of reassurances that we were given during the passage of the Health and Social Care Bill through this House. Also, this sends a message to the service out there that, actually, we cannot cope. I worry that it will also disincentivise finding ways of treating people more speedily—as day cases and so forth—which could, with a little more investment, help to address the problem.

[Lord Beecham (Lab)]

My Lords, the impact of the cuts which are being debated tonight—and here I congratulate my noble friend on bringing forward his Motion—are not confined to the health service. They also stretch to social services departments and social care. The most rewarding period of my fairly lengthy political life was as the chairman of social services in Newcastle from 1973 to 1977 when we transformed social care in that city. Much of what we did in those days is now being undone as the result of pressures on the social care budget and a lack of adequate funding for the problems which many of us are becoming increasingly familiar with. What are the Government going to do about that impact of the decision, as it would appear to be, not to adhere to the 18-week period? What estimate have they made, if any, of the impact on social services and social care in a climate where local government budgets are extremely hard pressed? The two things are inseparable. It was a Health and Social Care Bill, now an Act, and we need to look at the social care implications of this extended period because, undoubtedly, it will put increasingly impossible pressure on local authority social services departments and other organisations involved in supporting people in the community.

[Viscount Bridgeman (Con)]

My Lords, we have a health service which is endeavouring to meet an ever-present and probably ever-growing demographic challenge. I was interested to hear the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, on the effect of the number of older people accessing the service, but there are many more people growing old and it is surely self-evident that there is bound to be an increase in waiting lists.

Perhaps I may leave your Lordships with two statistics. It is remarkable that last year the NHS carried out 11.6 million operations, some 1.9 million more than in 2009-10, and 61 million out-patients were seen, again 1.9 million more than in 2009-10. The health service is not perfect and there is certainly no room for complacency, but perhaps I may remind noble Lords that the 2016 GP patient survey showed that 84.6% of respondents rated their overall experience as good, while the 2016 British Social Attitudes survey showed a historical high level of satisfaction. This is a service which is endeavouring under very strict budgetary pressures to improve the lot of the nation.