The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Markham) (Con)
My Lords, I am pleased to respond to this short debate. I reassure the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London that ambulances are an utmost priority for this Government. We are absolutely committed to supporting the ambulance service to ensure that people receive the treatment that they need when they need it. However, as many noble Lords have noted, our ambulance services have faced unprecedented pressure since the pandemic, so I totally agree with the point that this is a whole-system issue, as the right reverend Prelate and the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, mentioned, and a “beds and backlog” issue, as the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, mentioned. We all have similar variants on that. The plan for patients is still valid and is being reviewed by the current team. It is always being worked on and updated.
To directly address the point of the whole-system issue, or flow, some work that I have done has shown that the biggest predictor of ambulance wait times and handover times is bed occupancy. We all know that bed occupancy, which can be as high as 95%, with about 10% of our beds being taken up by Covid, is very much the issue. That is the first priority. Obviously, the Covid and flu vaccination programmes are important parts of that, but the £500 million adult social care fund to remove the 13% of bed blocking is vital to this.
I assure all the speakers who have mentioned it that the question of how the spend is allocated has been the subject of much debate, because we want to make sure that it really is targeted in the right place. Again, as a data hound, I wanted to make sure that we really were spending it in the best place. How it is spent now has been agreed, and that should be seen very quickly in the system.
The other issue regarding bed occupancy is, as the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, mentioned, the 7,000 new beds. I am a big believer in the use of virtual wards, but I will get that breakdown so that we understand exactly what that situation is. I have been very much at the forefront of making sure that those 7,000 beds are targeted at the areas of most need, which is vital in all of this.
I think we all agree that dealing with the flow to create the space for A&E patients is the central issue. Primary care is a part of it too. That is why the 50 million increase in appointments is a vital part, as mentioned by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London and the noble Baronesses, Lady Merron and Lady Brinton. I will get the specific information on pharmacies as well.
On the workforce plan, work is being done on that right now. We are working from the 2020 NHS People Plan, and I will update the House as we get more information.
Central to the whole issue of ambulance handovers is, as I like to call it, the flow—the whole-system issue. It is only when we resolve bed occupancy and the flow into adult social care that we will have the free flow through the whole system and the reduction in handover times.
Response times were brought up by all the speakers. A lot of that is about managing the calls to achieve the right outcome. Yes, it means more call handlers, as was pointed out, so we are increasing the number of 999 call handlers to 2,500 and 111 call handlers to 4,800. I take the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, about paying tribute to the work they are doing and the impact they make.
It is also about making sure that the call is navigated correctly. I was made aware of the fact—maybe this was known already—that 50% of 999 calls do not result in a conveyance to hospital. That says to me that there is a lot more we should be doing to help people in their home, such as picking up people from a fall and making sure that we go out quickly to their care homes. The thought is: in those instances, is an ambulance staffed with three people the best sort of response vehicle when someone needs help being put back on their feet? Maybe that is a much better place for us to use quick-response paramedic motorcycle-type people. This is very much at the top of our agenda. It is something that I was speaking to the NHS chair about just this week and something that I am going to do personally in terms of visits.
On the use of 111, unfortunately I had experience of that this week when my four year-old son was up all night throwing up and I was a distressed parent. My wife, like any mother would, was saying, “Should we be taking him to hospital? Should we be ringing 999?” We called 111 between midnight and 1 am. It took me a while to get through, so I am not saying it was a perfect experience, but when I spoke to them and they were able to put me in touch with a local doctor who could support me and get us through, that was key to helping us and stopped us going into A&E or clogging up 999.
Having the right people to deal with the problem in the right way is the best approach. It ensures that when there is an absolute emergency and you are into your golden hour, so to speak, the focus is really on having the right people. I shall not pretend that we have got it all right now but, believe me, it is very much at the top of the agenda. The investment in the ambulance fleet—we are talking about £20 million per year—is about making sure that we have the right type of vehicles to sort out the right situation, while ensuring that this is all overseen by a national ambulance co-ordination centre so that we really are responding in the correct way to each type of call and triaging, as mentioned.
I have mentioned the 15 trusts and 45% delays before; these were also mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Merron. I am very much into what the action plan is to address each of those. It is at the top of my agenda when I meet my NHS colleagues and I will give an update on where we are with that plan and our actions. To me, that is all part of an exercise to identify best practice and then roll it out across the system. As part of that, we have just kicked off a winter improvement collaboration programme that is about trying to identify those best practices and roll them out. That is the £450 million fund we are using; we have already used it to fund 120 trusts to create capacity in the system, such as in Leicester, north Bristol and Grimsby, so that we have those wait areas and can increase the capacity in the system. I am personally visiting some of the new system control centres in Maidstone next week, so that we can see what good really looks like and ensure that we are managing it as well as possible.
In addition, within the ambulance services themselves, we have put £150 million of increased funding into the system for these measures. It includes a lot of support, because a lot of these calls are from people who have mental health issues, so making sure that we have mental health-trained paramedics is a key part of this as well. These are all parts of the plan for patients, which is very much alive in all of this. However, as mentioned in the Question of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London and by the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, industrial action will clearly have an impact on everything we are trying to do here.
I note at this point that we have made the pay increases recommended by the pay review body at all points but I accept that if people are balloting to strike, there are clearly things we need to understand about why they feel the need to do that. It is premature to predict the outcome of the ballot at this time. We know that there is a range of options on the ballot, be it strike, work to rule or no strike, across three unions nationally and regionally. We are working on a number of contingency plans but, until we know the exact shape it will take, we cannot put those in place. Public and patient safety will come first and foremost; I know that is a view the ambulance staff share, which again is a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Merron. When the ballot results are known, the NHS will sit down with the unions and staff to agree an approach with this in mind. They will agree the safe level of cover, which is foremost in all our minds, and then deploy our contingency plans around this safe level.
I hope I have managed to cover most of the points raised before I run out of time and sum up. Again, I will go over my notes to make sure that I follow up on any points I may have missed. I accept that this is an issue of key focus. I hope that the plans I have gone through this afternoon give a sense of what we are doing in this vital area. First and foremost, it is the whole-system issue, as mentioned by all the speakers today.
We recognise the pressures that the ambulance service and the wider NHS are facing. We continue to work closely with NHS England to ensure that patients receive the help they need when they need it. With that, I once again pay tribute to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London for securing this important debate. I know that we have a meeting soon, where I look forward to discussing this further.