NHS: Shared Business Services

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Tuesday 27th June 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for repeating that. Clearly, this is a serious matter. More than 700,000 letters with patient information were waylaid, with more than 1,700 cases of potential harm to patients. The correspondence lost included blood test results, cancer screening appointments, medication changes and child protection notes. I will put just three quick points to the Minister.

I noticed that the Secretary of State, in this Statement, referred a lot to advice that he received from civil servants. I find it rather odd that a Secretary of State should announce to Parliament the advice given by civil servants, which usually is not disclosed. Why can he not stand on his own two feet in relation to the decision made to delay an announcement to Parliament by four months? Secondly, I am still not clear from the Statement why such a perfunctory Written Statement was made the day before Summer Recess last year. Why was a full Statement not made?

Thirdly, I understand that Shared Business Services makes £80 million a year from this NHS contract, and that so far the exercise of trying to discover where the letters have gone and to put this right has cost £6 million. Can the Minister confirm that the entire cost will be paid by Shared Business Services? Can he also say what other penalties the company will pay? Finally, the NAO points out that the Secretary of State has a conflict of interest, as he is a major shareholder in this outsourced company. Is this why he was so reluctant to come to Parliament to give information?

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

I will answer the noble Lord’s four questions. The first was on taking advice from officials. I think the noble Lord would probably be alarmed if the Secretary of State was not taking advice from officials. That should be welcomed. It is clearly the case that he was thinking on his own, because he took the decision to follow that advice in the first instance in March, but was of the view by July that enough was known and that it was important to update Parliament before recess.

The second question was about the timing of the Statement. The noble Lord will remember that summer 2016 was a reasonably busy period after the EU referendum. The main point here is that the Statement was made before recess and was not held back until the autumn. As regards NHS Shared Business Services and the consequences for it, those consequences have been severe: it no longer has this contract and will, as my right honourable friend confirmed in another place just now, pay its share of the costs.

Finally, as my right honourable friend said, it could appear that there was a potential for conflict of interest, but in his view there was not one, because at all times—as confirmed in the NAO report—patient safety was the driving force behind the actions of the department and NHS England. It will always be the case, whatever arrangements the department has with an ALB—whether a standard agency, a joint company or whatever it is—that patient safety must come first. That was confirmed in the NAO report today.

Brexit: Nursing Staff

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Tuesday 27th June 2017 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact on the NHS of figures released by the Nursing and Midwifery Council showing a 96 per cent reduction in the number of nurses registering to work in the United Kingdom in the year since the referendum on leaving the European Union.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Lord O’Shaughnessy) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government are aware of a reduction in the number of European Economic Area trained nurses applying to register with the Nursing and Midwifery Council. The department’s assessment suggests that this is largely a consequence of the NMC introducing language testing, rather than the vote to leave the European Union. The number of European nurses working in the NHS increased by more than 400 between June 2016 and March 2017.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, what the Minister did not say is that there has been a 96% fall in the number of nurses coming from EEA countries in the space of nine months. This comes on top of a shortage of thousands of nurses in the NHS. The RCN has today issued a statement which absolutely disproves the Minister’s argument that it is to do with English language testing. It is quite clear that it is to do with the Government’s obsession with migration control at the expense of our public services and the imposition of a pay cap on nurses and other NHS staff. He and his fellow Ministers have found £1 billion to bung the DUP; when are they going to find the money that is needed to get rid of the cap on nurses’ pay and pay them what they deserve?

[Lord O’Shaughnessy]

I am afraid the noble Lord is mistaking cause for correlation in this instance, and let me explain why we think that is the case. The General Pharmaceutical Council introduced language testing in November 2016; it had experienced no significant drop-off in applications from EEA member countries after Brexit but before that point and a big downturn in applications after that point. So it is language testing; it also happened with the GMC as well when it introduced language testing. I know this is something that the noble Lord supports—he said as much in a debate on this very issue in 2015—because it is an issue of safety. That is why language testing has been introduced. I would like to say, however, that of course we value the work of EU staff who come here, and, indeed, all nursing staff. As the Prime Minister set out yesterday, we want them to stay and have offered a generous package to allow them to do so, and there are more EU nurses here than there ever have been.