Hospital Food

Simon Burns Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department of Health (Mr Simon Burns)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley) on securing this debate on hospital food. I hope she gets better swiftly. I have considerable sympathy with her as she was clearly suffering through no fault of her own, and I wish her a speedy recovery.

I know that food and nutrition is a subject dear to the hon. Lady’s heart, and that she has done a considerable amount of work in her constituency, bringing together schools, primary care trusts, the city council and others, Prue Leith not least among them, to see what can be done locally to improve the diet of her constituents. I pay tribute also to the many NHS staff who have worked so hard to push nutritional care up the agenda, and who continue to make it their priority.

Good food—nutritionally balanced, clinically appropriate meals that taste good— are right up there with good hygiene and good clinical care when it comes to a patient’s experience of the NHS. They are all things that we should be able to take for granted while being cared for by the NHS. Good food contributes directly to recovery from illness and it adds structure to a day that can be all too long and featureless. Although I agree with much of what the hon. Lady said, there are some details on which we may not have such close proximity of views.

As the hon. Lady mentioned in the course of her comments, we will shortly publish the Government buying standards for food. Developed by DEFRA and the Department of Health, they will support and encourage public bodies to provide a healthy balanced diet for public sector workers. They will also help to reduce the environmental impact of food and catering in the public sector. However, as the hon. Lady said, within the NHS, these standards will be voluntary, not mandatory. Government buying standards are already promoted through the NHS operating framework for 2011-12 and through the Boorman review of health and well-being on the NHS, now being implemented by NHS Employers. We will promote the Government buying standards through training and materials developed to help NHS organisations to procure more sustainably.

The Government believe in giving far greater responsibility and control locally to NHS providers. NHS trusts must be allowed to determine their own procurement policy. Hospitals need to find out the wants and needs of their local population and then work out how to meet them efficiently. Government’s role is to set the direction and the policy, but it is for local experts to deliver the food locally. This is not to say that the NHS is on its own. There are a number of resources available, including guidance on reducing food waste, sustainable procurement and developing menus and food services.

No health care catering manager need feel unsupported. If hospitals wish to increase the proportion of locally-sourced food, there is guidance to help them do that. If they have a problem with food waste, there are resources that can help them to tackle it. This is the way we should tackle problems—with assistance and support, not restrictive legislation and diktat. It is wrong for Government to meddle in the detail and to attempt to micro-manage the NHS from on high. Our job is to create the right environment, to set standards and to lead, and that is what we are doing.

[Joan Walley]

Is not there a contradiction in having minimum standards in schools but not having minimum standards that would apply in the same way to patients in hospitals?

[Mr Burns]

No, I do not think so, for the reasons that I have already given and because of our ethos that the modernised NHS should respond through local decision-making rather than top-down diktat from Whitehall or Westminster. However, as I have outlined, we are prepared to, and we have and we will, provide the guidance to enable local deliverers to seek advice and take decisions based on the best needs of their patients.

We should also bear in mind that the food needs of patients are already regulated and checked by the Care Quality Commission, through the choice of suitable food, the food and nutrition to meet reasonable needs and the support to enable patients to eat and drink—a subject that I will come on to because I feel very much, as the hon. Lady did, that that is an essential part of the care of patients in a hospital setting.

I share the hon. Lady’s concerns about poor standards of nutritional care. In too many cases, food has slipped off the menu of some NHS providers, and that is not good enough. Of course, proper nutritional care is a multidisciplinary affair. There are many links in the chain from field to fork. Food must be well sourced and properly cooked by well-trained catering staff, delivered efficiently by the porters, and properly presented on the ward. The chain is a long one, and if any single link breaks, the good work that went before it is undone. Of course, the best food is of no value if it is not eaten, and many people, particularly older patients, will need help, and they must have it. Stories of food left out of reach, or taken away before a patient has had the chance to eat it are shocking and, sadly, too common, as are stories of those unable to feed themselves left without the assistance they require.

The latest in-patient survey found that less than two thirds—64%—of patients always got the help they needed to eat. But that sadly meant that 36% did not always get the help, which, frankly, is unacceptable. That is something that hospitals must concentrate on to ensure that we quickly and dramatically raise those figures. In a civilised society, in this day and age, that is unacceptable as part of patient care, particularly for elderly people.

That is why we asked the CQC to inspect 100 hospitals, focusing on issues of dignity and nutrition. The CQC has begun to publish reports on individual hospitals, and we expect a final report in September. In most cases so far, the care was every bit as good as one would expect. There were many examples of high-quality nursing and of people enjoying healthy, nutritious meals. Indeed, in a number of cases, the quality of food was actually complimented. But the inspections also identified a number of hospitals that were failing to provide the nutritional care their patients need. In one damning example, a doctor was forced to prescribe water on a patient's medicine chart to ensure they got enough to drink. That, again, is unacceptable, and something that one would find hard to believe if it had not shown up in the inspection. Where there are deficiencies, the CQC has demanded that improvements are made. Progress against these demands will be followed up and, like everyone in this House, I expect such follow-up to be rigorous and complete.

The CQC's inspection programme is just one example of how we are shining a light on all aspects of the performance of NHS providers—in this case on hospital food. There are also the annual patient environment action team inspections, the CQC's in-patient survey and patient feedback through NHS Choices, along with any local surveys that trusts choose to undertake. This information is crucial if patients are to make informed choices about their care and if pressure is to be brought to bear upon providers to improve.

Improving the patient experience of care is vital to drive up standards. Providers need to listen to patients’ complaints and suggestions and to change and improve in response. This will be one of the main ways in which the NHS will improve in coming years. Our information revolution will mean that patients are better placed to understand and influence the NHS, and we expect to see standards increase as performance becomes more transparent.

When it comes to hospital food, people know what they want. They expect good-quality, wholesome meals that are attractively served, arrive on time and taste good. They want to receive the food they ordered, not what is left over. They want to be able to eat it in comfort, they want sufficient fluids to drink, and they want the help they need when they need it. That is hardly asking the earth, so we owe it to them to be clear about what they can expect in their local hospital, however good or bad it may be.

I understand the hon. Lady’s concerns about hospitals that are built without kitchens. However, there are many ways to provide food in hospitals. Excellent meals can be delivered ready-made, either chilled or frozen, and poor-quality food is not an inevitable consequence of being made off-site. Although the quality of the food at the University Hospital of North Staffordshire has been rated as among the poorest 20% in the country, that is not simply because it is not made in a hospital kitchen. Other hospitals, such as those in Papworth Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Dorset County Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, also have meals brought in and maintain in-patient survey scores that are among the highest in the country. In fact, for a small hospital, delivered meals can combine a wider choice of food and more accommodating meal times, with economies of scale and greater flexibility.

Delivered meals can also help hospitals to meet high sustainability standards, because although on-site kitchens might at first seem more likely to be sustainable, that is not necessarily the case. Larger off-site kitchens are often more efficient because, by utilising economies of scale, they can reduce the amount of energy they use. What is important is the quality of the finished product and whether it meets the specific needs of patients, not where or by whom the food is produced or prepared. If the best solution for a particular hospital is to do that on site, that is what should happen. However, the service should be contracted out if that is in the best interests of the individual hospital and its patients. We should reject any knee-jerk reaction that says doing it in one way will automatically be a disaster, or vice versa. With food, as with all aspects of NHS care, it is the outcomes that are important to patients, not the process. We need to remember that whoever provides the food, the trust management retains the responsibility for its quality. If the provider does not meet the standards that the trust has set, it must take action.

Of course, efficiency and value for money are also important. We have to find ways of producing excellent food at manageable cost. For some hospitals, that will certainly mean looking at delivered meals. This is sensible and prudent management, but it need not and should not mean poor quality. As long ago as 2002, the Audit Commission found no relationship between the amount of money spent on meals and their quality, and the Department of Health’s more recent internal analysis backs this up. Across the country there are trusts that provide great meals at low cost, which is precisely what all providers should aspire to. The Queen Victoria hospital NHS foundation trust is in the top 10% of NHS organisations rated by patients for having good food, but in the lowest 5% for production costs.

As ever, improving patient experience is central to the Government’s vision of the NHS. Good food is not only a vital element of that experience, but vital for improving clinical outcomes. However, I do not accept that the answer to these problems is to impose ever more controls that would prove expensive to administer, undermine local accountability and stifle the innovation and flexibility that hospitals need to tailor improvements to their specific local needs and constraints. Where food services are not as good as they should be, we should highlight the fact in order to improve care for patients. I do not pretend that making improvements will be easy or fast. Although there is much to do, I am confident that we now have the right approach and that the real winners in all of this will be patients.

Question put and agreed to.