Health and Social Care Bill

Lord Patel Excerpts

Tuesday 25th October 2011 Lords Chamber

Clause 1 : Secretary of State's duty to promote comprehensive health service

[Lord Patel]

My Lords, I shall just say something while I wait for my noble friend Lord Walton. My name is to Amendment 2, and I have no doubt that when my noble friend returns—I am glad to see that he has.

Amendment 2

Moved by

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Patel]

My Lords, my name is added to this amendment along with that of the noble Lord, Lord Walton of Detchant. He has alluded to the need to include this amendment in the Bill. I consider that not only do we need it but that it is not strong enough. We may have to consider making it stronger. I say this because it is important to indicate on the face of the Bill that the Secretary of State has the responsibility to promote and secure a high-level of education in the whole of the workforce that delivers healthcare. I use the example of medical education and training but that applies equally to the training of nurses and other health professionals who are also regulated.

The current system of medical education and training—a model that is copied by many other countries and is widely respected—has evolved over many years. It is not something that was planned overnight and then executed. It has delivered well trained doctors who have improved healthcare. The system is complex and its essential relationships with different organisations and responsibilities are well documented. Only about 18 months ago, legislation was introduced which further changed the regulatory mechanisms for the training of doctors and nurses by making the General Medical Council the sole regulator of doctors’ training from entry to medical school to the day they retire, including postgraduate training, continuing professional development and revalidation. If we tinker with this, we run the risk of fragmenting it and making it inconsistent.

As my noble friend has already mentioned, under the GMC we have postgraduate deans, the royal colleges, the deaneries, undergraduate deaneries and the local hospitals where doctors are trained. These work together in a complex relationship to deliver high-quality medical education and training. The Department of Health has issued a consultation document, Liberating the NHS: Developing the Healthcare Workforce. Some of its proposals have caused a great deal of concern. If those proposals are implemented we run the risk of damaging what has been built up over many years. Adopting a localised approach to education, training and workforce planning to meet the short-term needs of employers will destroy the national training for a national workforce that has been developed over a long time.

There are many other concerns; for instance, the lack of clarity over the role of Health Education England. How will it hold education providers and commissioners to account? There are serious concerns about the continuing role of postgraduate deans, a very important group of people in the delivery and quality assurance of medical education and training. Uncertainties about the role of postgraduate deans are already leading to concerns about managing the recruitment of doctors into training in 2012. There is a lack of information about what part local skills networks will play and about the risk of serious damage occurring to workforce planning, and a lack of clarity about their governance and accountability. The training of doctors also includes training in research methodologies, as the noble Lord, Lord Walton, mentioned. Development of academic doctors is crucial. We already have a problem with recruitment to academic medicine. Therefore, training in research methodologies, postgraduate research and higher degrees in research is crucial. None of these is included in the Bill. They are not included because, we are told, there will be a second Bill. It might even be called the social care and health Bill as opposed to the Health and Social Care Bill. However, we are waiting for the responses from Future Forum, which is considering this. Then we will have the Government’s response, despite the fact that they have indicated that all the proposals in Liberating the NHS: Developing the Healthcare Workforce will need to be implemented by April 2012—the time is rather short. Perhaps the Minister will indicate when we are likely to see this Bill related to education and training. If there is not a satisfactory answer, we may have to consider putting a framework for medical education and training in this Bill.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, I have two amendments in this group, but noble Lords who have looked at them will have noticed that they are almost identical. One of them has inverted commas in it. At this point, I ask the Committee to discount Amendment 8B because the inverted commas do not mean a great deal. However, I would like to take a moment out to pay tribute to those in the Public Bill Office, where this drafting error occurred, and I know exactly why. They have had unending patience, have been infinitely polite to everybody who has gone up there and have provided impartial advice when under enormous pressure. So if this is the only mistake they have made with my amendments, they have done amazingly well.

I would now like to quote from the report from Future Forum by Steve Field. In it he pointed out:

“The professional development of all staff providing NHS funded services is critical to the delivery of safe, high-quality care but is not being taken seriously enough”.

I am glad to see that the Government have also decided to put down an amendment providing that we should state on the face of this Bill the importance of education and training.

Amendment 8A is almost exactly the same as Amendment 6 except that it adds the words, “a nationally co-ordinated system”. The reason is that currently, the standards are set by deaneries, the royal colleges, the universities and the regulators. At the other end from the high-profile degrees and specialist competencies from the royal colleges, there are qualifications such as the NVQs, which have been used for training healthcare assistants. There has recently been much debate about the standard of healthcare assistants, but I think there is a foundation there that could be built on to raise standards across the board. However, it needs to be nationally co-ordinated rather than have lots of odd little bits of training in one particular area, because otherwise when staff transfer, the organisation of management of another area believes that they are adequately trained, when actually there is no national benchmark for that competency. That is why I put in the words “nationally co-ordinated”.

I turn to the amendment put down by the Government. I hope that the Minister will explain how those deaneries and those national co-ordinating bodies that set standards will link in. Will the national Commissioning Board and the clinical commissioning groups have to consider education and training in everything that they do? If they do, the deaneries will have a national planning function in conjunction with the royal colleges and specialist societies which set specific competency standards. I also wonder whether this government amendment, which talks about the health service in England, takes consideration of the NHS in Wales and Northern Ireland. If it does, how would that happen and, if it does not, what arrangements have been made with the devolved Administrations?

I should also ask whether the Secretary of State has a comprehensive duty. Will the national Commissioning Board and clinical commissioning groups have a duty to include education and training when deciding contracts and making commissioning decisions? If they do not do build in education and training right across the piece, will an appeal go to the Secretary of State?

In proposed new subsection (1) of the Government’s amendment, there is mention of,

“provision of services as part of the health service”.

Given the nature of the health service as we see it developing, am I right to understand that that would include all private providers, all voluntary sector providers and all public health and health protection arrangements? Am I right that any provider which does not then provide education and training would need to prove why they were exempt from providing it, if they have a contract for a specific service?

We heard earlier about the independent treatment centres and the sense that they had milked off some healthcare services but had not undertaken training and education. We hear now about specialist trainees in some of the disciplines. Orthopaedics is a clear example whereby a lot of shoulder and knee surgery is not being done in their training environment, so the trainees are not adequately exposed to the range of operations. Indeed, an orthopaedic surgeon contacted me about how she was crowded out in theatre by trainees desperate to watch her carry out a shoulder operation simply because they had not seen that operation done—whereas previously they had broader experience.

If the clinical care of patients is contracted out to private sector or voluntary sector providers, the clinical experience associated with providing that care, if it is high quality, will provide a fantastic education and training opportunity. If we are truly developing a healthcare workforce that will be comprehensive for the needs of the nation, it does not matter who owns the building or the service where that patient is being treated. If that is really high quality, there is much to be learnt. In all the years when I have asked patients if they minded students, postgraduates or whoever being present, there have been only two occasions when patients have said that they would prefer them not to be there—and they were for very understandable reasons. Everyone understands the need to educate and train, and the majority of patients understand that if the person looking after them is also teaching they are being held to account by the group that they are teaching.

Those are some of my questions to the Minister when he comes to speak to his amendment. I ask the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, whether they see the use of the word “comprehensive” as a duty on the national Commissioning Board and clinical commissioning groups, and whether, when they talk about delivering NHS services, they are intending that private providers and public health are included.

My final point is: whichever of these amendments is agreed—and I have a sneaking suspicion that mine will not be top of the polls; but that is the way it tumbles—the different providers, whoever they are, need to contribute to the cost of education and training. I suggest that when determining a tariff, those who do not contribute to education and training on a particular part that they are providing should not receive the full tariff because they will be ducking out of part of the ongoing responsibility to secure the nation’s health.

--- Later in debate ---

[Earl Howe]

The trouble with that is that we are straying into the mechanics and the detail of the education and training system, and we are still consulting on how it will work. That is the difficulty I have in answering some of the detailed questions that are being put to me. I can answer many of them, but once we move into particular questions on how the system for education and training will all fit together, it would be imprudent of me to put anything on to the record at this stage.

[Lord Patel]

I go back to the question that the noble Lord, Lord Warner, asked. In the event that the example he gave should happen, ipso facto, it would mean that Health Education England had failed.

[Earl Howe]

It might or it might not. All I can say is that the Department of Health will have designed and co-ordinated the new system and will develop the outcomes framework. Health Education England will be providing oversight and national leadership for education and training. The department and Health Education England, together, would no doubt have a role in sorting out the kind of situation that the noble Lord, Lord Warner, has adumbrated. However, it is a little difficult to discuss this in hypothetical terms. I have tried to set out, broadly, how the system should operate—

--- Later in debate ---

[Earl Howe]

As I read it, it is the noble Lord’s amendment and it is for him to speak to it, but it refers to the education and training of “the health care workforce”. That will include a lot of people, but not those who are not healthcare workers.

[Lord Patel]

That depends on the interpretation of the word “care”.

[Lord Walton of Detchant]

My Lords, this has been a lengthy debate on an extremely complex and difficult matter in a complex and detailed Bill. Medical education and training of the entire NHS workforce is absolutely crucial and it is vital that it appears in this Bill. That is why I very much hope that the Minister will take away Amendment 2 and think about trying to persuade the Government to adopt it. Other issues that have been raised will not go away. For instance, my medical colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, talked about psychotherapists. There was also talk about the crucial problem of the future of healthcare assistants.

I would remind your Lordships that 15 years ago I steered through this House the Bills to regulate chiropractors, followed by regulation of osteopaths, so that they are now regulated by statute. I also chaired the House of Lords Select Committee on complementary and alternative medicine, which held a detailed inquiry. In that field, too, it is good to know that herbal medicine practitioners are close to being regulated. Therefore people who work in other aspects of healthcare will have to consider whether or not they will need and require statutory registration and regulation, though not in this Bill perhaps.

The government amendment is right as far as it goes, but it leaves a massive amount of information still up in the air. The Minister has given us a comprehensive and detailed report about the future of Health Education England. There is already a body called Health Education England, which has been in existence for some little time. I do not know what its provenance is now, but it is chaired by my close friend, Sir Christopher Edwards, who is a former vice-chancellor of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. He has chaired a body called Health Education England for a while.

[Lord Patel]

It is Medical Education England.

[Lord Walton of Detchant]

Medical Education England, I beg your pardon. Will that body disappear with the development of Health Education England? Do we know what the provenance of that body is going to be or who is going to fund it? What is its constitution going to be and what are its authorities? Will it have the authority to deal with the issues that we raised in this debate about the crucial importance of making certain that commissioning groups, trusts and even private providers offer facilities for education and training.

I shall not go on. I am happy now to withdraw the amendment in my name, but I believe that these issues are so important that they should not await the tabling of another government Bill on education. The Government should introduce something into this Bill to make the future of health education and training clear. I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 2.