NHS: Accident and Emergency Services

Lord Kinnock Excerpts

Wednesday 7th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My noble friend has made an extremely important point. I have visited hospitals where that very model has been in place, for example, in Luton, where I went not so long ago. More and more hospitals are adopting this suggestion so that when people turn up at A&E they can be triaged immediately into urgent and less urgent cases, often to be channelled through to the GP service.

[Lord Kinnock (Lab)]

I endorse the sentiments just expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, unusual though that may be. I ask the Minister to commend those hospitals and health authorities that have introduced GP services as part of their A&E emergency response. I also draw his attention, if he has not seen them already, to the statements of the Royal College of Nursing and the College of Emergency Medicine. Both said emphatically that a substantial part of the reason for the present pressures is the effect of the reduction of local authority funding which means, in the words of one of the college leaders, that there is no community care. That has meant that people have to be accommodated in hospitals who would otherwise be in either their own homes or local authority homes. Is it not the case that the savage cuts imposed on local authorities, which have had a direct impact on commitment to care for the elderly especially, are to blame for a substantial part of this crisis? Will the Government consider, in addition to NHS funding, reversing at least some of those cuts?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his endorsement of the model which my noble friend proposed for GP presence in or alongside A&E departments. I fully agree with him on that. It works well. As regards local authority funding, social care expenditure, in particular, has decreased over the past three years. Obviously that has had an effect on the NHS. It would be idle to pretend that it has not. However he will know the very constrained funding environment in which we stand, and I understand that the party opposite has not undertaken to reverse the reductions in funding to local authorities for understandable reasons. That means that we have got to think clever, and one of the initiatives that we are launching next year is the better care fund which will bring together the NHS and social services in a meaningful way. By far the lion’s share of the funding in the better care fund will go to social services.