Deprived Areas

Lord Patel Excerpts

Thursday 1st July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, absolutely: as part of the NHS long-term plan, the Government have committed to improving mental health services and increasing the funding that goes to those services, as a proportion of overall funding, in every year of that plan.

[Lord Patel (CB) [V]]

My Lords, inequalities in healthcare have long plagued the NHS. Inequalities exist not only in years spent in ill health and shorter life expectancy but in referrals of care, leading to poor health outcomes for people from deprived communities. With waiting lists running into the millions, dealing with this effectively is a priority. To this end, does the Minister think that NHS plans for clinical validation as a way of tackling waiting lists are likely to worsen inequalities in access to treatments?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, clinical validation is, at its heart, about adapting to the need to manage larger and longer waiting lists and tackle those. Patients will be treated in order of clinical priority and then by length of wait to reduce the harm by waiting. But I reassure the noble Lord that his point is very well made and that, in the NHS recovery plan, there are eight actions to reduce inequalities in the restoration of services, including reporting on providing services to the poorest 20% of neighbourhoods and black and Asian patients.