Integrated Care Regulations

Debate between Lyn Brown and Rosie Cooper

Monday 18th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Lyn Brown]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I believe, and I know he believes, that these changes are important and should not be done by statutory instrument. The goal of healthcare integration can and should be pursued with the full scrutiny provided by primary legislation.

Locally, these plans have raised huge concerns. Currently, Newham is in a sustainability and transformation partnership with seven other boroughs—Havering, Redbridge, Barking and Dagenham, Waltham Forest, Tower Hamlets, Hackney and the City of London. Those are really very different places, not only politically but in terms of age, ethnicity and levels of deprivation. Any integration plan that covers that wide an area will be incredibly difficult to get right.

I understand that the current thinking is more about dividing that eight-borough STP into three new integrated care systems, or ICSs. Newham will be lumped together with Waltham Forest and Tower Hamlets. I am very worried that pushing these areas together, with one extremely overstretched budget, will result in money being taken away from my constituents in Newham, whose needs are extremely high. If the Government were talking about enabling greater integration at local authority level, where democratically elected councillors could be properly involved, the issue would not be that much of a concern.

To be frank, I have absolutely no confidence that there would even be a proper consultation about integrating Newham into a three-borough ICS. I know that that is what local leaders expect only because I asked them about it before the debate. I am told that not one health body locally actually wanted to sign up to the STP—not one local body. But that did not matter to those who are really in control, so it was just put in place anyway as the East London Health & Care Partnership. This supposed partnership was given an incredibly complicated governance structure. Again, no one actually wanted it. That was not because health bodies do not want to collaborate; it was because this Government’s failed reforms do not have the confidence of clinicians.

There are many basic questions that need to be answered and that have not been. I have five for tonight. One, how do the Government plan to prevent fragmentation, given that there are so many different ways that these arrangements could be made? Two, how will existing borough-level partnerships slot into these new structures? Three, how are dedicated NHS staff, elected local representatives or even—horror!—patients themselves going to have control over how these structures are implemented, which areas are joined together and which services are included? Who will have that control?

Four, once one of these integrated bodies has been set up, what actual accountability will there be? As we know, public health and social care services are currently in the hands of councils. Even beyond that, many health and wellbeing objectives are the statutory responsibility of local councils too. Therein lies accountability to local people, but it is totally unclear to me how councillors will be able to hold the new ICPs to account in turn. If those new bodies are going to be responsible for making decisions, they should have to be transparent and accountable. I am not at all opposed to the integration of services, but we must create more accountability, and not risk losing the little that is currently there.

My fifth and final question is this. How will the Government guarantee to my constituents that this change will not become another back-door privatisation? How can they reassure me that the enormous, inefficient, profiteering “health maintenance organisation” monsters that exist in the United States will not be given a foothold here in exchange for, say, a trade deal post Brexit? This is what I find most offensive about the statutory instrument. Ministers have been offered the chance, time and again, to say that private companies will not be able to act as integrated care providers, and will not be able to bid for the huge contracts that will be created. But I have heard no good reason why the Government will not make those commitments.

[Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)]

The House of Commons Library recently confirmed that 26 health service contracts worth more than £128 million are currently out to tender, on the basis of legislation that NHS England recently urged the Government to repeal. Does my hon. Friend not think that private companies should be blocked from securing these contracts, and that the Government should deal with the counter- productive effect that these competition rules and powers have on the integrity of NHS care? There is a branch of Virgin Care in my local community. Someone who attends a podiatry appointment, for example, will be told that no qualified staff are on hand, but only people who can cut nails. It is outrageous that those people are being paid on the same basis as everyone else.

[Lyn Brown]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Private companies are able to work within the structure set out in primary legislation such as the 2012 Act. The Minister said in an interview that one of the reasons why we cannot have this in a Bill is that it would be too complicated to draft. As far as I can see, however, it is quite simple. The Government should bring forward new legislation to put these reforms on a proper transparent footing with full scrutiny, and should argue for the decisions that they want to make—including decisions about openness to private contractors, if that is something that, ideologically, they want to defend.

The Government should give the English electorate a plan that they can see and can judge for themselves. The Government should tell the electorate what they are doing with the NHS. My feeling is that their proposals are contained in an SI because they hoped that they would slip by, would not be seen and would not be judged, but I tell the Minister that he will be judged.

Question put.

The Deputy Speaker’s opinion as to the decision of the Question being challenged, the Division was deferred until Wednesday 20 March (Standing Order No. 41A).

NHS Reorganisation

Debate between Lyn Brown and Rosie Cooper

Wednesday 17th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)]

I often comment that when I became an MP I did not get two items that would have made life so much easier—tarot cards and a crystal ball. In considering the coalition Government’s health policy, they would be essential tools for the job, because before the general election, the statements of the Leader of the Opposition—now the Prime Minister—gave us the impression of a future for the NHS that was completely different from the one we now face. He said:

“We are the only party committed to protecting NHS spending…I’ll cut the deficit, not the NHS.”

He spoke about a period of organisational stability in the NHS. Those were broken promise No. 1 and broken promise No. 2. Instead, we are faced with a vision from the Secretary of State which could set us back 20 years. I say so not as political rhetoric, but from 30 years’ direct involvement in the NHS, including 10 years as chair of a hospital.

The press seems to share that pessimistic view—“extraordinary gamble,” “cocktail of instability,” “accident waiting to happen”—hardly a ringing endorsement of the Government’s health policy. For me, it is a recipe for disaster: one part reduced financial resources, two parts structural reform and three parts break-neck speed—

[Lyn Brown]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the estimated cost of £2 billion to £3 billion for the reorganisation could be far better spent on outcomes for our citizens and treatments for our children?

[Rosie Cooper]

Absolutely. I am sure the Secretary of State will give due cognisance to the comments being made, especially about putting resources right there on the front line, delivering for the very people who are paying the wages.

In his evidence to the Select Committee on 20 July, the Health Secretary set out five aims of the White Paper, and he went through them here today. I shall review some of those in the light of the dribbles of information that we have received, and see how they stand up. The first aim was creating a patient-led NHS. Let us start with the Secretary of State’s glib catch-phrase, “No decision about me without me”—