NHS Mandate

Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts

Thursday 25th April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right that there is cross-departmental relevance to both the social care Green Paper and the workforce strategy. She will know that the long-term plan and the forthcoming Green Paper on social care have been developed in tandem. A number of reforms were already set out in the long-term plan, including the enhanced health and care homes model, which will of course involve MHCLG; the comprehensive model for personalised care, which will involve the personalised health budgets; and of course local health and care plans, which will simplify healthcare systems. We are looking forward to the Green Paper being published in full and I am sure that she will want to hold me to account on that in this Chamber. I look forward to that moment with great anticipation.

Of course, the workforce plan and HEE’s budget are also a matter for cross-departmental debate, as is the spending review, which is another reason why a lot of work is going into this. Again, it is important that this work is done to get it exactly right. The principles on which that work must be done are to consider multi-year funding plans for clinical training places based on the workforce requirements of the NHS going forward.

[Lord Low of Dalston (CB)]

My Lords, I want to raise not the timeliness of the mandate but its content. The noble Baroness will be aware of the problems of undercapacity in eye care services—which were documented by the report entitled See the Light: Improving Capacity in NHS Eye Care in England, produced by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Eye Health and Visual Impairment, of which I am co-chair—and that undercapacity is putting the sight of patients at risk. The first recommendation of that report, addressed to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, was that eye health should be specifically included in the Government’s mandate for the NHS, to ensure that it is accorded a higher priority than it appears to enjoy at the moment. Will the Minister give me an assurance that this recommendation will be fully addressed when the new NHS mandate is finally published?

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford]

I thank the noble Lord for his question. I can tell him that, while the accountability framework has not yet been published, it has been decided that it will be a high-level framework that will set two objectives: to ensure the effective delivery of the NHS long-term plan, and to support the Government in managing the effects of EU exit on health and care. Of course, the long-term plan includes improvements to a number of services and this will be followed by the national implementation programme for the long-term plan, which will have milestones for delivery of that plan up to 2023-24. I hope he will be reassured that eye health is included in that. If he would like to follow up specific points with me regarding the concerns his group has raised, I would be very happy to meet him later.

Medical Examiners and Death Certification

Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts

Wednesday 18th October 2017 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Low of Dalston]

To ask Her Majesty's Government when they expect to report the outcome of the consultation on the introduction of medical examiners and reforms to death certification launched in March 2016; and whether they still intend to introduce those reforms in 2018.

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

My Lords, since the election the Secretary of State for Health has reaffirmed his commitment to introduce medical examiners to provide a system of effective medical scrutiny applicable to all deaths that do not require a coroner’s investigation. The Government’s response to the consultation will be published shortly and the system will be introduced no later than April 2019. Pilot sites are already offering the bereaved an opportunity to raise concerns while improving patient safety through mortality data.

[Lord Low of Dalston (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. While welcoming the Government’s commitment to introduce the medical examiners scheme by April 2019, the president of the Royal College of Pathologists said in March that,

“it is vital to ensure that implementation is properly planned. There is still much work to be done in adapting the current system and recruiting and training medical examiners and officers”.

Given all the delay to which the introduction of the scheme has been subject already, are the Government satisfied that it will be ready in time?

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

The noble Lord is quite right to highlight this point. There have been calls for medical examiners since the Shipman inquiry; those were also endorsed following the inquiry into Mid-Staffordshire. Our intention is to ensure that, with planning time, the system can be introduced by April 2019, which is why the consultation and the regulations needed to underpin the planning for the system will be produced in short order.