Health and Social Care Act 2012

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Thursday 5th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

My Lords, since the 2012 Act was passed, there have been some significant improvements in NHS performance, not least in cancer outcomes, for example. There are also around 42,000 more staff since 2010. So improvements have clearly been able to happen within the legal framework set by Parliament in 2012. Nevertheless, we recognise that as the service is required to become more integrated and people across different care functions are required to work together, we need to look at the structure. There is already joint working, for example, between NHS England and NHS Improvement at the regional level. But if the NHS identifies any barriers, we will look at those.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, when we are looking at the structure, which is clearly important, can we also look at priorities within the National Health Service? I heard this morning that certain treatments and unnecessary medicines are to be ruled out. Can we have a comprehensive list of those? It is not right that dandruff shampoo should be on prescription. It is not right that we should be looking at funding the treatment of gaming machine addiction. Can we have a real look at the priorities?

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

My noble friend makes a very important point, which is that as we move ahead, even with the funding settlement, it is essential that the NHS becomes more productive. That means looking at whether there are medicines or treatments that are no longer producing the outcomes it was suggested that they would and taking those out of service. It is very important to state that this has to be a clinically led process. We have already begun that with certain low-value prescriptions. NHS England is now leading that process—as I say, it is clinically led—to look at whether there are other treatments that could be discontinued.