NHS: Waiting Times

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Tuesday 18th December 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the effect of NHS Foundation Trusts offering private healthcare services on waiting times for NHS patients.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord O'Shaughnessy) (Con)]

My Lords, since the founding of the NHS in 1948, NHS hospitals have been able to generate small amounts of additional income by treating both international and British private patients. Since 2010, this has remained well below 1% of hospitals’ total income. Any surplus created is used to improve the services that NHS patients receive.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his Answer. I declare an interest: I am an ordinary user of the NHS. I do not have any private medical care, nor do I make any private payments. Is it not true that there are now over 4 million people on queues waiting for treatment in the NHS? Did he see the article in the Times last Thursday headed “Patients pay £1bn to jump NHS queues”? Chelsea and Westminster Hospital recently offered me insurance, terming it the best of both worlds. How many trusts offer opportunities for people to go private, and what is the effect on ordinary users of the NHS? Surely with the shortage of resources, it can mean only that they will wait longer than at present.

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

I am not familiar with the type of insurance the noble Lord is talking about, but would be delighted to see what he has been offered. The 2012 Act obliges income from non-NHS activities to be tied to a foundation trust’s principal purpose, which is,

“the provision of goods and services for the purposes of the health service of England”,

and that is the standard by which it should be held. He is right that waiting lists have been growing. The NHS is doing more than ever—2 million more operations in 2017-18 than in 2010—but we realise that we need to do more, which is why the Prime Minister made the historic commitment to increase funding in the NHS by £20 billion in real terms in five years’ time.