Health and Care Bill

Lord Bradley Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Report stage
Thursday 3rd March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I must declare my interests: I am a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College of General Practitioners, the Academy of Medical Sciences, and the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, which is affected by Amendment 168. I am an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, president of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy and an observer on the Medical Schools Council. All those organisations have a vested interest in this amendment.

Very simply, this amendment just makes sense for the future. Without it, the cost of healthcare to the nation will rack up and never come under control. The talk about people working in the NHS is a fallacy. What matters is whole-time equivalents and the competencies of those people with whole-time equivalents. While it is absolutely right to say that it might take 15 years for somebody to come through training as a specialist, what is not understood is that, as soon as people qualify, having left their undergraduate training, they are then on the job. They are learning on the job, working incredibly hard and contributing, but they do not have the competencies developed. That is what takes a long time. The modern techniques that get things done much more quickly and that deal with more patients—laparoscopic surgery having been an example—are highly skilled, but highly efficient.

We have a shortage of 1,400 anaesthetists. Without anaesthetists, you cannot have good maternity services, you cannot operate and you cannot have good emergency services. They are absolutely essential to the whole running of secondary care. Then, of course, in primary care, we have the gaps as well, so the specialist training is really important.

As well as that, this cannot be handed over to algorithms on a computer and left to IT, because of the need for personal interaction between the clinician and the patient and their family. I do not believe that this will be replaced by AI. However, many jobs performed currently will be taken over by AI, freeing up clinicians to become even more specialist competent.

Building on the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, I remind the House that poor care overall is more expensive than good care in the long term. It is a very short-term view to think that you can provide poor care; in the long term, you really do stack up debt. Stopping workforce planning will not avoid costs at all; all it will do is move the costs from one year further into the future and create bigger problems. Although I hesitate to say it, I think it will also fuel the whole litigation culture.

Amendment 80 is absolutely essential. If it is accepted by the Government, or passed by this House, then Amendments 81 and 82 would fit very neatly into the criteria against which such reports are to be written on the workforce. I remind noble Lords who might be unaware of this that the royal colleges already collect workforce data. Verification of data collected from integrated care boards and areas will not be difficult, because you will simply see how the figures match up. The figures will be reported centrally, and planning can take place. The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, is so straightforward; I cannot see why we want to rack up costs further by not putting it through. Vacant posts cost money, they do not save money. By putting that through, we will have more efficient appointment procedures. This is an historical anomaly which could be corrected easily.

Relying on bank staff is really dangerous. Mistakes happen much more often when staff come in who do not know the place, the team or who to call. You would never field a sports team consisting of a bunch of people brought together to play at a high level who had never played before. Yet, what we are doing in our NHS is bringing in bank staff who often do not know the hospital or the team. They do not know the strengths of the other people in the team, so they do not know to whom they can delegate. I hope that the House will approve Amendment 80 if the Government are too short-sighted to just accept it.

[Lord Bradley (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support very strongly Amendments 80, 81 and others in the group. They have already been explained eloquently, so I will not repeat those arguments. I declare my interest as an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists. We have already heard about their importance, as a profession, as part of the wider allied health professionals. It is always worth remembering that allied health professionals make up a third of the total workforce.

Responding to workforce planning in Committee, the Minister stated that he shares the view of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay—from whom we have just heard—on the importance of

“integrated workforce planning across NHS and non-NHS employers … and that work is under way on it.”—[Official Report, 24/01/22; col. 102.]

Unfortunately, at that time the Minister did not set out what that work was. The response did not really give a great deal of hope regarding the long-term failings in workforce planning for allied health professionals in general and speech and language therapists in particular. We need to ensure that this is addressed. As we have heard, these amendments properly address the issue.

I draw particular attention to subsection (4) of Amendment 80, which clearly states that royal colleges must be consulted in drawing up the report which will be laid before Parliament on

“meeting the workforce needs of the health, social care and public health services in England.”

By that consultation, we should ensure that allied health professionals, and particularly speech and language therapists, are included. These professionals sometimes work directly in the NHS. Often, however, they work in other health settings and can be employed in those settings by the NHS. They might also work in settings such as education, the criminal justice system and other parts of the social care system, or in independent practice. They should all form part of the consultation to ensure that the plans which come forward on workforce planning are comprehensive in their nature and coverage. Therefore, these amendments are crucial to achieving this objective. I am sure that the Minister will want to give us that same assurance when he responds.