Health and Social Care Bill

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Monday 14th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Cumberlege]

My Lords, I am very grateful for that intervention. I have no experience of gymnasts and, sadly, I cannot remember that particular time. However, I have chaired very big boards. I have chaired a board of 26 and it was a nightmare. It was a nightmare because we are such a lovely nation and we always try to get consensus. Trying to do that takes time and tough and speedy decisions are not taken. In the end, the board loses the grip necessary to manage the service, the organisation or whatever it is in charge of. Therefore, I strongly support my noble friend on the issue of having 11 members on the board. When one has a very large board, a clique forms; one gets a few people who in the end run the board. They run it outside board meetings. They make the decisions before they come to the board. One gets a body of people who are responsible on the board but are actually disenfranchised—they are accountable but disenfranchised—and I think that that makes the board totally dysfunctional. Therefore, we should resist the temptation to have representatives on the board. We need a chairman with considerable leadership skills; a chief executive of proven management expertise; executives who know the business; and non-executives who bring a breadth of experience.

I have some sympathy with the arguments that have been put on the issue of the Director of Public Health but I wish to reserve my position on that, as I do on the suggestion put forward by my noble friend Lady Jolly on HealthWatch England, because it could be that the board, or whoever, might decide that there is a non-executive who has wider experience and possibly could be more effective on the board than the chairman of HealthWatch England. This needs discretion and we should leave it in the hands of the board and the Bill and not try to make it representative.

In an earlier debate the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, who is not in his place today, referred to the “fatal tendency” of the NHS to be bureaucratic and exercise producer catch-up. He said that:

“the tendency of any organisation that is in a monopolistic position [is] to be run for the convenience and in the interests of those who are providing the service, whether doctors, nurses, managers or whatever”.—[Official Report, 9/11/11; col. 251.].

We have to be very careful that we do not fall into that situation and we must try to address that “fatal tendency”, as he described it.

I wish to make one comment on the seductive amendment on limiting the numbers to be employed to 500. That again is a mistake. If we set a number, it is very likely that that number will be reached where possibly only 100 are required. It needs a great deal of scrutiny by the Secretary of State and others, through the mandate, to see what the board is doing and whether it is effective and keeping to its budget, which I am sure will be closely watched. I would like to keep the number on the board to 11.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege. She and I have sat opposite each other at meetings for more years than I care to remember.

However, her belief that the chair of the NHS Commissioning Board will only be able to manage a board of 11 is slightly misplaced. We already know that the person who holds this office will be able to walk on water, with due deference to the most reverend Primate. We know that this individual will have the most extraordinary qualities. Indeed, the Health Select Committee has demonstrated that by the overwhelming vote that it gave him on his appointment. Therefore, any person of such calibre who is able to manage a quango with such an enormous budget must surely be able to manage a board of more than 11 people. That goes without saying.

It is probably unhelpful for the Bill to specify precisely the number of people who will be appointed because circumstances will change. At different times it may be appropriate to have particular people or specialisms involved, but that will change over time. To lay down the numbers too specifically is probably a mistake. Indeed, I am not sure that 11 is a sensible number for the effectiveness of boards. It is too large for the most efficient and effective of boards but it is not quite large enough to bring together all the strands of opinion and expertise that you might wish to bring.

My main reason for intervening was not to pick up on that point but to question a couple of the amendments, in particular Amendment 52C in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly. The amendment refers to the board,

“including one member who is also the Chair of Healthwatch England”.

That is a misguided amendment. It is very important that the viewpoint of the patient is heard clearly by the NHS Commissioning Board, but it would be wrong to bind HealthWatch England into the collective decisions that will be taken by the NHS Commissioning Board. Had the amendment said something along the lines of, “The chair of HealthWatch England will be able to attend all meetings of the NHS Commissioning Board and to contribute to them fully” rather than talking about membership, it would have been much better.

There is already a concern that HealthWatch England will not be seen as a properly independent organisation, partly because in the Bill it is framed as a committee of the CQC and also because the local healthwatch organisations will be wholly owned subsidiaries of local councils around the country and the money for them will not even be ring-fenced. Under those circumstances, there is a real problem about the reality of the independence of HealthWatch England. Further, to put the chair of that body in the position of perhaps having collective responsibilities for NHS Commissioning Board decisions is potentially a serious mistake. I would like to see a position where the board has the chair of HealthWatch England as an adviser. His advice may or may not be accepted, but it will be on the record what advice has been given.

I hesitate to oppose an amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath but the same applies to the Chief Medical Officer. He should be there to advise the board—and that advice should be recorded—rather than being a member of the board and therefore being part of that collective responsibility. In framing the structure of the NHS Commissioning Board, there needs to be clarity of thought. There are a number of areas of expertise and interests that ought to be reflected in board membership—those individuals should bring their expertise to the table—but they cannot be there as representatives of those particular interests because they will have to take collective responsibility for the decisions of the board. However, it is also important that you have explicitly there a number of people to give advice. That should certainly include the chair of HealthWatch England and the Chief Medical Officer.

[The Archbishop of York]

My Lords, I was not going to speak to these probing amendments, but as I have been gratuitously referred to twice it is prudent that I should speak.

The noble Baroness referred to number 11. We should remember that Jesus had 12 disciples; the twelfth betrayed him and so there were eleven left. Then the disciples decided before Pentecost to choose Matthias, so they then had 12 again. They then ran into trouble once St Paul the Apostle came along and they had 13, but they did not know where to put him. Numbers are always dangerous.

I am with the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy. We may need all kinds of characters on the board but it would be wrong to specify them in the Bill. If we do, then we will not have the kind of liberty and freedom to be creative and to enable the Secretary of State to promote a comprehensive health service and improve the quality of service. He needs that to help him promote the health service and then improve it. The board needs to consist of people who have the calibre to do that.

I have sympathy with Amendment 54 but not in the precise form in which it is put. It states:

“The Secretary of State must ensure that a majority of the non-executive members of the Board appointed under subsection (1)(b) have relevant experience”.

Those members should have relevant experience but as to whether they should be a majority, again, the discretion should be left to the Secretary of State and the board. If that is specified, they will all be there in big numbers but might end up not delivering or promoting whatever is required. Yes, the people appointed should clearly have relevant experience of either working in the NHS or serving on an NHS body—the NHS is not the same as Rover cars, Marks & Spencer or Tesco and you need people with relevant experience who are able to deliver properly—but I would go for the Secretary of State having people with relevant experience of working in the NHS or serving on a body without necessarily saying that they must be in the majority.

As these are probing amendments, I shall be interested to hear what the Minister has to say about that.