NHS: Five Year Forward View

Lord Walton of Detchant Excerpts

Monday 1st December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, the noble Lord makes a very good point. It is for precisely that reason that we have looked at the mechanism that we have called the Better Care Fund to bring together budgets for health and social care. It will amount in practice to a transfer of funding into social care from the NHS. We are clear that that is the best way in which we can realise the vision that we have set, which is a preventive one for people—in other words, to forestall admissions to hospital.

Local government is feeling the strain—I do not seek to deny that—but so are many other areas of our national life. Up to now, the Better Care Fund aside, we have found an extra £1.1 billion from the NHS budget to bolster local authority budgets, and we are maintaining public health allocations at the same figure as before, so no cuts there. I realise that the strains are considerable and that local authorities are having to find ingenious ways of moving forward, but I am encouraged by the Better Care Fund plans that are coming forward; they look credible and exciting in terms of the quality of care that local authorities are now looking at.

[Lord Walton of Detchant (CB)]

My Lords, it may be thought inappropriate that someone of my age should comment upon what is called a forward view but which is in fact a five-year plan. Having said that, I have listened carefully to the Statement repeated by the Minister with his characteristic lucidity and authority, and although I have heard many five-year plans discussed by Governments of all parties over the past 66 years since the NHS began, I think that there are features of this one that are quite important, not least the crucial importance of integration between medical and social care. Will the additional funding that the Minister announced be capable of introducing and maintaining a seven-day week in the NHS, in the community and in the hospitals, which has been long awaited? That is a very important point.

I welcome what the Minister said about developments in the training of healthcare professionals; that is a crucial point at this stage in NHS development. I also welcome what he said about developments in biomedicine. In what way are the Government going to be able to handle the many new orphan and ultra-orphan drugs that are now coming on stream for the treatment of rare diseases, as a result of research in the NHS, which are going to be extremely costly? Is this going to be handled by NICE or do the Government have any specific plans regarding that problem?