NHS: 111 Telephone Service

Lord Laming Excerpts

Monday 13th May 2013 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

On the issue of A&E, there is no doubt that the NHS has been under very heavy pressure over the past few weeks. I am pleased to say that over the past two weeks the NHS as a whole has met the 95% standard, but obviously that statistic masks difficulties that are still being experienced in particular locations. The challenge now is to ensure that we are ready for next winter, and all the work that is now being done in NHS England, by clinical commissioning groups and within providers is designed to ensure that we are much readier for the pressures to come.

[Lord Laming]

My Lords, does the Minister accept that, although we refer to “primary care services”, they are not primary in that they are available for the shortest number of hours per week of any part of the health service? Unless things change dramatically, it is inevitable that accident and emergency will be seen as the first point of call for more and more people, especially in out of office hours.

[Earl Howe]

I take the noble Lord’s point. That is why the 111 service has been created; there is no doubt that there was a very confusing landscape in which people did not know who to call out of hours, and they did not necessarily have the telephone number of the out of hours provider in their area. The 111 service is designed to simplify all that, and across the vast bulk of England people are getting a good, if not fantastic, service. Unfortunately, in two areas of the country, the south-east and the south-west, we are still seeing problems arising, and those are being gripped.