NHS: Hospital Services

Lord Warner Excerpts

Thursday 6th December 2012 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Warner]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress they are making with the reconfiguration of NHS hospital services.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe)]

My Lords, the Government’s policy is that front-line NHS reconfigurations should be locally led and clinically driven. Changes to services should be led by those who know their patients’ needs best. That is why we are empowering clinical commissioners to design the services that will make the greatest difference to improving healthcare and improving people’s lives.

[Lord Warner]

I am grateful to the Minister for that reply so far as it goes. In the light of yesterday’s Autumn Statement, will the Minister and his colleagues study carefully the recent Nuffield Trust report, which cogently suggested that we are facing a decade of austerity within the NHS with the need to secure 4% efficiency savings on a yearly basis, not just to 2015 but up to 2021-22? Will Health Ministers engage in a serious dialogue with the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges whose new chairman, Professor Terence Stephenson, suggested in July that we had far too many acute centres trying to provide 24/7 services across too wide a range of medical specialities? Will he accept, particularly in the light of the Answer that he gave to the previous Question, that we should be doing more to take money out of acute hospitals that are performing indifferently and putting it into community-based services?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I think it is common ground between the noble Lord and the Government that we need to see care delivered more in the community and less in acute settings; that was a policy that his Government espoused. I agree with the noble Lord and with Terence Stephenson that we need to deploy clinical leadership, evidence and insight as a driving force behind service change. Service change is not new; it has happened all the time throughout the NHS’s history. Clinical commissioning groups on the ground will be the driving force for this, but the NHS Commissioning Board will be there in support and the wisdom of the royal colleges will clearly need to be tapped to provide the board with expert clinical advice. Indeed, that is the theme behind the board’s aim to establish clinical networks and senates to help build the clinical evidence for change.