Health and Care Bill — House of Lords, 2022-03-03
Topic: Health
Stephanie Fraser (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, it is clear that there remain huge and serious concerns across the House and beyond regarding how the Bill addresses the chronic staff shortages in our health and care services. I say health and care services, because as we know, the staff shortages affecting the delivery of services are not just within the NHS but felt across the board, in health, care and public health services. While this is a current and urgent issue, future workforce planning will be the single most important factor in limiting our ability to deliver the ambitions we all have for the future of health and social care and importantly, the ambitions of the Bill Like many other noble Lords, I have the greatest respect for my noble friend Lady Cumberlege, and if she feels that the current duties the Bill places on the Secretary of State in Clause 35 to report at least every five years are inadequate, then I urge the Government to take note. As my noble friend said when she introduced her amendment, she is not alone: at least another 100 organisations are calling for this aspect of the Bill to be strengthened. I ask the Minister today, therefore: if the Government are not planning to accept the amendment, how do they plan to address the challenges of future workforce? How will they assess the future needs of health, social care and public health services? Previous work has not quantified the workforce numbers needed and we cannot wait for another review I have a couple of observations on the amendment itself, which I commend in that it does require the Secretary of State to report on this wider health, social care and public health workforce, unlike the current Clause 35, which refers only to the health service. However, I sound a note of caution, because if we simply assess vacancy rates, or get into the mindset of needing to replace like for like, role and service development, which will be essential to support future health and care services as they evolve, risk being stifled, as my noble friend Lady Harding referred to Those who hold much of the data on health and care professionals are not only the royal colleges, as the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, mentioned, but also the regulators. I note that proposed new subsection (4) of the amendment does not mention health and care regulators, which I think should be consulted, in the spirit of my noble friend’s explanatory statement Finally, when describing the system in place for assessing and meeting workforce needs, as training and regulation are UK-wide, I hope there will be a spirit of co-operation between NHS England and the devolved nations to ensure that we are training the right people for the right roles across the UK NHS: this needs to be in any future workforce assessment as well. I also cannot understand why we do not accept that the royal colleges in Glasgow and Edinburgh can help us recruit. That seems completely bananas—that is the technical term. Will the Government accept that we cannot put workforce planning yet again into the "too difficult" box? We need to do more and go further, as my noble friend Lady Cumberlege urges. I accept there are no silver bullets, but the regular publication of independently verified projections of future demand and supply of workforce could, over time, create a sustainable model for improvement that would have a positive impact on both patient care and staff experience.