NHS Long Term Plan

Lord Ribeiro Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ribeiro (Con)]

My Lords, Secretary of State Matt Hancock, on taking up office, identified three priorities for the NHS: workforce, technology and prevention. The ambitions set out in the plan cannot be realised without significant improvements in the health and social care workforce. It is therefore disappointing, as other noble Lords have noted, that neither of these plans was published alongside the NHS Long Term Plan, and we will have to wait until the end of the year. Similarly, funding for medical training is welcome, increasing training places from 6,000 to 7,500, but post Brexit more places may be required. NHS Improvement reported 11,576 whole-time equivalent medical vacancies in quarter 1 of 2017-18—a vacancy rate of 9.3%, up from 6.78% in the previous year. This is equivalent to 108,000 clinical staff, including nurses. Add to this the adverse effect of Brexit, which I mentioned earlier, which is likely to reduce nurse recruitment from Europe, and it becomes imperative for us to retain and grow our own staff.

Your Lordships may recall my own interest in preventing smoking in cars with children present. As a surgeon, I was aware also of the effect of smoking on wound healing and, in particular, surgical site infections after operations, the risk of which doubles if patients smoke on the day of surgery. I therefore welcome the plan’s commitment to offer all patients who smoke and who are admitted to hospitals NHS-funded tobacco treatment services to assist smoking cessation. On Public Health England advice, the option to switch to e-cigarettes will be made available. NHS hospitals are an ideal environment to wean patients off smoking, yet the policy on smoke-free zones varies between hospitals and patients are often not given the help they need to quit. There is an aspiration in the plan to achieve an Ottawa model for smoking cessation. It is used in 120 hospitals in Canada and will, I hope, be used in all NHS hospitals by 2023-24. My question to the Minister is: when will the rollout of the Ottawa model in secondary care begin and what funding for smoking cessation programmes will there be over the lifetime of the plan? Finally, can the five-year plan of the Taskforce for Lung Health be reviewed by the Government to consider the areas not covered within the plan?