NHS: Targets — House of Lords, 2020-02-06
Topic: Health
Anthony Young (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Hunt on giving us the opportunity to debate this issue and on his tour de force contribution, giving us the benefit of all his vast experience I declare an interest: like many, I am a frequent user of the NHS, which gives you an opportunity to observe first-hand the range and quality of service that you get. I echo my noble friend Lady Crawley in saying that in most cases it is very good. I am also a member of my GP’s patient care committee. The practice has nearly 8,000 patients but operates in what is an extended semi-detached house. For the past five years or more we have had plans for a nice brand new medical centre offering a good range of services, but that was suddenly scrapped. Quite apart from the £1 million or so wasted in the planning, you can imagine the frustration and demoralisation in our practice as well as the impact on the local A&E. I would welcome a comment from the Minister on why essential schemes such as this are suddenly scrapped I declare another interest: our daughter Laura, an ex-paramedic, is now a trainee advanced clinical practitioner in A&E, working at a local hospital, so I hear some of her first-hand experiences I, too, congratulate my noble friend Lady Wilcox on a superb maiden speech that drew on her vast experience in local government. I am sure it was the first of many great contributions It is national apprenticeship week. Your Lordships will not be surprised that, as an apprentice ambassador, I will refer to staffing and skills, of which we all know there are vast shortages in the NHS. We should be ashamed of our need to poach highly trained medical staff from countries that desperately need their services. Year after year we fail to train enough people. Worse still, and a great example of the law of unintended consequences, the Government previously decided that they would scrap free training for nurses and introduce a bursary—a really smart idea. That is irony on my part. I am glad to say that they have restored it, but it did not help Unfortunately, the NHS cannot make full use of the apprenticeship levy because of the need to find replacement staff for apprentices’ study time. Again, I hope the Minister will take away that point to see how to improve that situation. If she wants some good advice, may I suggest that she goes to the Open University, which is heavily involved in nursing apprenticeships We are supposedly in the middle of the fourth industrial revolution, yet the use of new technology in the health service is patchy, to say the least. Recently, somebody told me, "We can’t even transfer patient details electronically between hospitals." This is in theory the 21st century, yet we still cannot make use of that technology I enjoyed the Panglossian contribution to the debate made by the noble Lord, Lord Bates. We should pay tribute to the good work done by NHS staff in a very challenging day-to-day situation, as he acknowledged. However, all is not for the best in the NHS world, as the Government acknowledge in their funding proposals. May I suggest that the Minister looks across the NHS for examples of best practice? My noble friend Lord Turnberg gave us an example. That is not the only hospital trust that is using that, but why does it not spread? It takes far too long. I predict that a lot of the Government’s proposed funding increases will be wasted unless best practice of providing good services and keeping to budgets is looked at. I hope that the Minister will take that as a constructive contribution. It takes far too long for best practice to permeate through the NHS, and unfortunately bad practice can be tolerated with disastrous consequences for far too long, as we heard on the Paterson report. Paying billions in compensation is disastrous. There are examples of no-fault liability schemes that would encourage responsible whistleblowing and save that huge waste of NHS money I have come to the end of my time. Again, I thank my noble friend Lord Hunt for the opportunity to contribute to this debate.