European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Debate between Baroness Thornton and Lord Warner

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued) & Report stage & Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Tuesday 21st January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Warner (CB)]

My Lords, I have added my name to this amendment for a reason which keeps coming up in our debates: they are all about trust and whether we can trust the Government to behave in a reasonable way. A lot of the amendments that have been put down have been about trying to ensure that—if I may put it as crudely as this—the Government behave well in carrying out these negotiations. We have seen a kind of emotional blindness, if I may put it that way, in the discussions we have had on immigration systems and physical documents that people who have a right to live here can use. This seems to be another piece of work in which we have to table an amendment to try to ensure that the Government behave properly and well in these negotiations.

It is quite extraordinary. Having agreed these reciprocal healthcare arrangements with the EU countries and Switzerland so recently, I cannot understand why we should not just be able to use this amendment to ensure that there are no rapid changes. The Government almost seem to forget the huge number of people who in their daily living move for holidays between the other 27 EU countries and Switzerland, as though that does not matter. This is an important part of people’s lives. They book their holidays assuming the system will not change. Particularly after this recent piece of legislation, no one has told them there is a risk that something may change.

The Government are bringing on themselves a mood in which people will be suspicious of what they are up to. They will raise a lot of anxieties totally unnecessarily. In my experience of government, if you allow rumours to be fostered they spread around quite quickly. What we are trying to do with this amendment is to remove the temptation. The Government would be wise to listen, unless the Minister can give a level of assurance that will remove any suspicion that somehow, because of the way they behave, the Government are up to something.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Jolly and Lady Brinton, for introducing this. As they said, we are basically picking up where we left off in Committee. I was not satisfied with the answer the Minister gave about reciprocal healthcare. As noble Lords have now said, nobody really understands why, when we already have legislation that we considered and passed last March, that does not form part of the negotiation that will take place. I read the letter that the Minister sent to the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and it is very confusing.

I will take a more cynical view of this. A year ago, when we had in front of us the Healthcare (International Arrangements) Bill, it had in it five or six Henry VIII powers. It gave the Secretary of State the power to make a deal about healthcare with anybody in the world they might choose, without any recourse to this Parliament or any accountability. This House wisely changed that into the Bill we passed, now the Act, which does what the Government had said they would do. They said they would not add to the policy arrangements in any area. They would take up the European Union policy and translate it into a way that worked post Brexit. That Bill we had before us a year ago did not do that; it extended the powers incredibly.

I fear that we are seeing a repeat of what the Government tried to do a year ago, so I really need to know from the Minister what powers the Government may take—not what will happen between now and December, but what will happen in a year. What will it look like? Will there be any reciprocal healthcare arrangements? Will there be 27 agreements, which is what the Minister was talking to us about a year ago when we were discussing international healthcare and looking at crashing out of the European Union? What has happened to those 27 agreements? Where have they gone?

As my previous noble friend Lord Warner said—he is still my friend—it is only a matter of time until people become very anxious about this, because not only are people working all the way across Europe, but they are going on holiday all the way across Europe. At the moment, the Department of Health and Social Care’s website is really opaque. It does not give us any clarity at all about what might happen.

Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between Baroness Thornton and Lord Warner

Wednesday 8th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, I think the noble Earl has answered the question as far as it goes, but he raises several points. First, this Bill did not need to be in front of us at all because many of the changes that are taking place do not need primary legislation. Secondly, his colleagues in another place have constantly said that the Bill cannot be dropped because it has gone too far. We are not in the same place now as we were at the end of Committee; millions of people in the health service have now expressed their view that this Bill should not happen at all. Given that, do the Government have a plan B in case they need to withdraw the Bill? Do they have people working on that in case the Bill has to be dropped?

[Lord Warner]

My Lords, before the Minister responds to that question, will he consider later—if he cannot answer now—the budgets for clinical commissioning groups? I understand from a meeting of the national Commissioning Board, which was held in open session on 2 February, that Sir David Nicholson is reported as having said that clinical commissioning governance is, in effect, moving on apace, and that more than 95 per cent of clinical commissioning groups have now agreed their constituent practices and geographies and are already seeing benefits in their services from the work that they have been doing. At the high level, around 50 per cent of the commissioning spend is already delegated to clinical commissioning groups from PCTs under various delegation schemes. That seems fair enough, but there is a final point on which I would welcome the noble Earl’s clarification. It says that the ambition is for all this to be so delegated to clinical commissioning groups by 1 April 2012. Will that delegation still be part of the present powers, or is it in anticipation of the legislation being passed in time?

Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between Baroness Thornton and Lord Warner

Monday 19th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Warner]

Could I just clarify for the noble Baroness that I do not claim that my wording is perfect? I brought the National Commissioning Board in—slightly against my better judgment, I have to admit—because it has the responsibility for, in a sense, approving the commissioning arrangements and spending the money. My instincts were that it would not support this unless it had been consulted and was satisfied with the commissioning arrangements.

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, I will be very brief because my noble friend and other noble Lords have pretty much covered the territory here. This small group of amendments is rather important and significantly improves the Bill. I realise that they are probing amendments, but they do three things. The first amendment is about changing culture. It talks about the manner of the integration of services, not just an integrated manner. The second one says that we need to define integration. This must be perhaps the third or fourth debate that we have had on integration in the past however many weeks. It seems quite clear that there needs to be some definition of integration in the Bill. My noble friend Lord Warner explained that. Given that many parts of the Bill offer a list of different ways in which things can be described and done, I see no reason why the same list on integration cannot be included. The third point in the amendment to which I was pleased to be able to put my name is about encouraging co-operation across the piece. Having the national Commissioning Board mentioned in that is rather important.

Those three points about changing the culture, defining what you mean and encouraging co-operation seem to me to be the type of message that any health and well-being board will look to as it starts up its work. It will look to what is in the Bill, what is in guidance and what is in statutory instruments to help it to work out what to do. To have something that defines the kind of culture that is expected, defines integration and the way the bodies should work, lists the bodies that should work together, if not in the Bill then certainly in guidance, and explains the manner in which they are expected to work seems to me to be a very helpful way forward.

Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between Baroness Thornton and Lord Warner

Thursday 15th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Warner]

My Lords, I was not going to speak in the debate and I certainly do not want to speak on the subject of the cap, in case I get into too much trouble from my Front Bench. I would like to pick up the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes. We are moving into a world in which the NHS will have to look at how it uses its assets. As I have said in earlier discussions, the NHS footprint on its sites and its utilisation of buildings is relatively small given the size of the sites.

We are also moving in a direction where, across the House, we favour integration of health and social care. It would not be surprising if, in the next few years, on some sites of district general hospitals, there were nursing homes run by the private sector which had self-payers as well as state-funded payers. The way the Government are approaching this creates flexibility in how income might be generated. I hope we will not be so prescriptive in how we meet the legitimate concern that NHS trusts should concentrate on their core business, if I may put it that way, that we shoot ourselves in the foot again by having a cap that actually works against the best interests of the NHS.

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, I have never known my noble friend to show particular restraint about how he felt about his Front Bench.

This discretion has morphed into something that says that making efficient use of assets and being effective is the same as maximising private income. Of course, that is not the point here. The point is getting the balance right. The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, made a very good point: the NHS does not exist to maximise private income profit.

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[Baroness Thornton]

My noble friend Lady Massey is, as usual, correct about these matters. I am always happy to take my lead from her. All my experience of working with NCH and lots of children’s organisations over the years, and, more recently, of talking to YoungMinds, leads me to think that this is a matter that the Government need to take into consideration.

[Lord Warner]

My Lords, my name, too, is on the amendments. I support what my noble friend Lady Massey and the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, have said. I want to refer to adolescent health services. We know that primary care services are not often very user-friendly in relation to adolescent health needs. I have come across GPs who have had special sessions and even private doors so that adolescents can come into their surgeries without being spotted by nosy neighbours. There are some real issues of privacy with young people in the adolescent years. They do not always find these services easy to use, when they often have considerable health needs and sometimes quite serious mental health needs. In my time as chair of the Youth Justice Board some time ago, we were starting to find that for many young offenders the origin of their offending was when someone significant in their family had died. It was the absence of any bereavement services that caused them to go off the rails. It is more than just symbolism to put these extra words in the Bill; it is a very important signal to the NHS that Parliament recognises the need to pay attention to the needs of children, to listen to them and to meet a set of needs which are often not being met.

Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between Baroness Thornton and Lord Warner

Wednesday 7th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Warner]

I was not doubting the enthusiasm on the Liberal Democrat Benches regarding this area. I just wanted to provoke the noble Baroness into giving the kind of excellent speech that she has given. I was hoping that we would hear from her. I also join her in paying tribute to Paul Burstow, and indeed Norman Lamb, for the very supportive way in which they have approached this issue.

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, we have had a very interesting debate on this imaginative amendment from my noble friend Lord Warner. Today’s debate might well be the only debate on social care in the whole life of this Bill, including in the Commons. I would like to talk about some real people, with real conditions and real problems, because it is only by testing this Bill against those that we will know whether it is going to work, and whether the issues that are being raised by noble Lords across the House are going to be taken into account.

I would like to pick up where the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, left off, and talk a bit about dementia, partly because I have a very close friend whose wife has dementia and I have been following the path of this for the last seven or eight years, but also because this is an issue that affects hundreds of thousands of people. The Alzheimer’s Society reckons that: there will be 1 million people with dementia by 2025; dementia costs the country £20 billion now; one in three people over 65 will die with dementia; only 40 per cent of those have a formal diagnosis—that figure varies enormously across the UK; and, of course, which is the reason why they are important to this debate, people with dementia are very significant users of health and social care services. We know that people over 65 with dementia are currently using up one-quarter of hospital beds at any one time. The current system of charging for care, such as help with eating, hits people with dementia hardest, as the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, has said, and amounts to what the Alzheimer’s Society calls a “dementia tax”.

We know all of this. The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Dementia, the National Audit Office and the Alzheimer’s Society have identified that significant resources are wasted on poor-quality care—for example, through crisis admissions into hospital or long-term care. There are opportunities to save money in dementia care across a wide range of settings; for example, by investing in early intervention and prevention services. In a way, those matters are the test of this Bill. Can we save the money and deal with the people who have got dementia? How can we promote a shift of NHS resources away from acute hospitals into community-based services, as recommended by the NHS Future Forum and the recent inquiry by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Dementia?

I know that the Government recognise that a sustainable NHS in the future requires a new long-term settlement on social care to ensure quality for people facing disability and long-term illness. We think that this amendment will help with that. When I was looking at this amendment, I remembered that I myself was given a speaking note that said, “Of course, health covers social care, too”. That is not good enough any more; it is not good enough to say that by writing health into the Bill and giving the Secretary of State responsibility for it, we are somehow covering social care. Apart from anything else, it has not worked. We know it has not, and we are where we are. There are some very serious issues.

Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between Baroness Thornton and Lord Warner

Monday 28th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton]

I think that I explained to the noble Baroness earlier today that these are probing amendments. When we received the briefing from ACEVO, we were very concerned, and that is why we tabled the amendments. It is very important for those of us who have been promoting the voluntary sector all these years that we find out what the truth is. They are probing amendments; there is no intention at all to press them, and I said that from the outset. They are to explore the meaning and the effect of the provisions. Sometimes amendments can have unintended consequences. I hope that the noble Baroness will accept that this is not partisan; it is a genuine effort to get some explanation for how this part of the Bill might work.

[Lord Warner]

My Lords, I hesitate to intervene in this debate, but I am prompted by the intervention from the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby. I speak as someone who is probably some way away from the Labour Front Bench on the subject of competition. I do not start from the same position as my noble friend, but like her I am extremely puzzled about what the Government are trying to do. We may be in the realm of unintended consequences.

We go back to July 2010, when the Government published a White Paper that said that the aim was to make the NHS the largest set of social enterprises in the world. That was the Government’s policy. It is quite difficult to achieve that, I would suggest, without some capacity building—and I was one of the Ministers involved in setting up the Social Enterprise Unit in the department, under the previous Government. The Minister will know about the case of the East Surrey nurses and their attempt to set themselves up as a social enterprise. It is very difficult for people to set up these new forms and organisations without some assistance and capacity building.

Looking at the data, you can see that the voluntary and community sector currently delivers only a tiny proportion of NHS services. The National Audit Office estimated that over 2007-08 PCTs spent less than 0.5 per cent of the NHS budget on commissioning services and support from the voluntary sector. So we are dealing with a minute proportion of the provider side of the NHS when we talk about social enterprises and voluntary organisations. Those sectors cannot grow bigger without some assistance; they have to be given some help; there has to be some investment of resources in capacity building so that they can compete for contracts and provide alternative ways of providing services outside hospital in a community setting. In many parts of the country, they are the big hope for actually producing a set of services which are not based on in-patient care of individuals. We are never going to get to that brave new world without some capacity building. As far as I can see, in their attempt to reassure their coalition partners on the subject of competition the Government may have shot themselves in the foot on this issue.

We need some clarity about what the Government are up to on the subject of the voluntary and social enterprise sectors. Forget the private sector; we need to know how they will grow those sectors, which seems to be their declared aim, without some capacity building and without altering the proportion of services that those sectors provide in the coming years. I would be glad to be reassured by the noble Earl but, as I and ACEVO understand it, the Bill as drafted freezes the proportion. We need to understand from the Minister whether the Government are going to amend it to clarify that position, because it is certainly exercising the outside world.

Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between Baroness Thornton and Lord Warner

Monday 28th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Warner]

My Lords, I do not intend to follow that in a similar style. I support Amendment 144 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Patel, to which I have added my name. I do not want to go over the ground covered by the noble Lord, Lord Patel, but I just wish to share with the Minister in particular and the House in general my own experience from introducing near-miss reporting in the NHS when the National Patient Safety Agency was established. In those good old days the figure was around 800,000 a year. The current figure, as my noble friend Lord Patel said, is of the order of 3,000 a day; it is on an upward incline.

The issue at stake in those days was not the principle of trying in effect to copy the airline industry and improve safety by having people come clean about near misses—some very serious, some less serious. No one disputed the merits of trying to learn from those experiences. Where everybody got a little concerned was around the making public of the information. I will not delight the House with some of the discussions that took place in Richmond House about whether the first lot of information should be made available, because who knew what the Daily Mail would do with it? Noble Lords will be pleased to know that the Daily Mail behaved in a predictable manner and ran screaming banner headlines about how near to death 800,000 people came each year.

The important point was that one was beginning to change the culture of the NHS, which knew that the information was being put in the public arena. The problem with the Bill is that it leaves to the board the decision about how to disseminate information. We as citizens would be better off putting in the Bill the specific organisations to which the information should be disseminated—which is what the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Patel, does. I strongly support it and hope that the Minister will give it very careful consideration, and will carry on the publication and dissemination of the information on an agreed basis.

I will make a couple of remarks in response to the concerns expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, about a market in commissioning skills. I have no particular wish to promote a market in commissioning skills. However, as a former Minister responsible for the performance of primary care trusts, I say that many trusts seriously lacked commissioning skills. These were lacking particularly in areas such as collecting information, analysing it and using it to establish need and to procure services to meet those needs. We should not in the Bill do anything to limit the ability of the new clinical commissioning groups to receive and acquire the skills to enable them to do their job effectively, wherever the skills may be located. That is a very important part of introducing successful new arrangements for clinical commissioning.

I pray in aid of that approach the history of Dr Foster. The dear old NHS had been collecting data for decades but was unable to use them effectively to improve performance. It took an outsider coming in—Dr Foster—to use the information and turn it into something that was useful to the NHS in terms of improving its performance. We should not be too hung up on precisely where clinical commissioning groups get their skills from to do their job.

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, I forgot to speak to my Amendment 137A. I will make three points. The first is not about my amendment. I say how much I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, on the issues that are the subject of all the amendments to Clause 20, and of the debate and discussions that we are having in the Chamber and outside it about the mandate. I also say to the noble Lord, Lord Marks, and my noble friend Lord Harris that there is clearly an issue about information and confidentiality that must be addressed before the Bill leaves the House.

I will also say how much I agreed with the orphan amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay. Mine, too, is something of an orphan amendment but is rather important. Amendment 137A states:

“The Board must ensure that in relation to its duties under sections 13C to 13N, those persons in the private sector contracted to provide health services must contribute in the same way as public providers towards the achievements of those duties”.

Those duties are to do with the NHS constitution, effectiveness, quality, reducing inequalities, patient involvement, patient choice, innovation, research, integration, and the impact of those services. It is very important that we have clarification that all providers have a duty to promote those.

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[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, we move on now to discuss innovation and research. The amendments in this group are very important and were prefigured to an extent by the discussion we have just had. The amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and me, is modest in some ways. However, it strengthens the promotion of innovation in the provision and commissioning of health services. Taken together with the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Warner and the noble Lord, Lord Patel, it strengthens the Bill significantly and in a very important way.

We have come to what seems an intractable problem: how to encourage innovation in the NHS. This is part of the Minister's area of responsibility and was also part of the area of responsibility of my noble friend Lord Warner when he was a Minister. I look forward to both of their contributions on this matter.

We know that often, the taking up of great innovation is a painfully slow, complex and bureaucratic process. Our amendment strengthens the promotion of innovation through commissioning as well as through the provision of health services. I would like the Minister to explain why that should not be possible—because it would strengthen and help innovation—and also how it could be done, because we are looking for incentives to promote and spread innovation throughout the NHS.

Last week, the noble Lords, Lord Willis and Lord Ribeiro, and I, with others, enjoyed a dinner and an evening with organisations and businesses to discuss how to ensure that innovation is disseminated, promoted, supported and invested in throughout the NHS so that both the NHS and UK plc benefit. The point was made during the evening that often we do not talk about sophisticated issues but about simple changes to nursing practice, such as the way dressings are done, or to information management, that nevertheless can have an important impact on patient care and progress.

I will not speak further on the amendments because I will be very interested to hear what other noble Lords speaking to their amendments in the group will say. I hope that the Minister, with his passion in this area, will give us some comfort on the matter. I beg to move.

[Lord Warner]

My Lords, I will speak in support of Amendments 129 and 129A in the group. First, I will take up the point made by my noble friend Lady Thornton about the long-standing problem of the slowness of the NHS to take up innovative ideas, and the frustration often felt by people in this country who have invented new approaches and created new innovations, only to find that they have had to go abroad to get them projected, promoted and sold, with the NHS being one of the last to take up the innovation, which was often funded in one form or another with public money by the British taxpayer. It is a long-standing problem and not a party-political issue; it has been a challenge for successive Governments. One of the most embarrassing moments one has as a Minister is when one meets foreign delegations or travels abroad to back Britain and is asked, “Has this innovation been taken up in the NHS?”, whereupon one has to shuffle one’s feet and think of a suitably weaselly form of words to avoid answering the question directly. It is a very long-standing and difficult issue.

Amendment 129 draws attention to the importance of the procurement of goods and services in the promotion of innovation, and to the duty that that places on the national Commissioning Board. There are many reports about the importance of public procurement in advancing innovation and in ensuring the take-up of UK inventions and innovative practices. The latest one was by the Science and Technology Committee of your Lordships' House, of which I was a member. The report brought out some of the dilemmas around using procurement to take forward innovation. Yet again it cast doubt on central government's use of their purchasing power and muscle to drive the take-up of UK innovations in public services.

The NHS is not alone in having this problem, but it is part of the problem and it is a big part of the public sector. A major and long-standing problem is that too many purchasing decisions are taken too far down the organisational food chain, with too little intervention at senior level and too little willingness to use large-scale purchasing to spread the use of innovative approaches. Whatever else the national Commissioning Board has, it has a lot of financial muscle. It must use that, through the NHS’s purchasing capacity, to drive innovation, which often comes from publicly funded research. I hope that the Minister, who is well aware of the issue, will see the sense in putting something like Amendment 129 in the Bill. We cannot say too often that public procurement is a way of helping to establish and drive innovation in the NHS.

Amendment 129A seeks to add the idea of an innovation fund to the board's armoury on innovation in new Section 13K. There is nothing novel in this. The amendment continues and builds on the proposals of my noble friend Lord Darzi, which led to regional innovation funds that strategic health authorities currently manage. Again, we need to strengthen the mechanisms in the Bill for driving innovation in an NHS that historically has been slow to take up innovations and apply them to scale for the benefit of patients. We are not talking about huge sums of money in the innovation fund, but relatively modest amounts in relation to the scale of NHS expenditure. However, an amendment of this kind would ensure the continuance of the useful work that has been started by the strategic health authorities following the promptings of my noble friend Lord Darzi.

It is typical of what we sometimes do in this country. We start an initiative with a fund at strategic health authority level and then shuffle the cards so that somehow, along the way, some of the initiatives and their benefits get lost. I hope that we can get some reassurance from the Minister that some kind of innovation fund will be available so that we can continue the work that my noble friend Lord Darzi so ably started to ensure that patients can secure the benefits of UK innovations.

NHS Commissioning Board Authority (Establishment and Constitution) Order 2011

Debate between Baroness Thornton and Lord Warner

Tuesday 1st November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, in moving the Motion on the NHS Commissioning Board Authority (Establishment and Constitution) Order 2011, I will also speak to the NHS Commissioning Board Authority Regulations 2011.

These statutory instruments were laid before Parliament on 15 September, and the date when they expire is therefore 10 November. However, the NHS Commissioning Board Special Health Authority website says that it was,

“established on 31 October 2011”,

and plays,

“a key role in the Government’s vision to modernise the health service”.

Technically speaking, the NHS Commissioning Board has not jumped the gun by broadcasting its existence before the parliamentary process has been completed. However, given the whole way in which the change agenda for the NHS is progressing, there is an extent to which I feel our views may not count for very much at all, and may count for less as time goes on.

I would like the Minister to clarify whether there was a period of consultation before the order was laid, because I can find no evidence of it. I am aware that there was a statutory period of consultation with the staff unions during the summer under Section 28 of the National Health Service Act 2006. I am also aware that there was a consultation on the White Paper published last year. However, I am not aware that the decision to establish a shadow authority was taken or mentioned during that consultation.

The Explanatory Notes to the statutory instruments make play of the fact that the Future Forum said in its deliberations that the NHS Commissioning Board should be established as soon as possible. However, I do not regard the deliberations of the Future Forum as a substitute for a properly managed consultation involving all the bodies that have an interest in this matter. The Future Forum is a body with no official or statutory status or accountability to Parliament. Its members have not been appointed through the Nolan procedures and do not even need, for example, to register their interests. Praying them in aid of an order before Parliament is slightly odd.

The procedure for putting in motion important statutory instruments such as this should not be treated in a cavalier manner. Indeed, it is so important that there was an exchange of letters between the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, the chair of the Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee, and the Leader of the House, the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, last summer when a matter of consultation was clarified. In answer to a question from the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, about the consultation procedures, the Leader of the House said:

“The Government recognises the best practice established by the Code of Practice on Consultation and will continue to observe it wherever possible”.

I am concerned as to whether the code of practice was adhered to in this case, and if not, why not.

This order outlines how the proposed new commissioning architecture for the NHS might be delivered, so it is of huge importance. I would like some assurance from the Minister that, as we move forward with other orders pertaining to the Bill, proper consultations will take place.

Today, as the NHS Commissioning Board commences a period of shadow running before becoming fully operational, the emergent commissioning architecture has become far more complex. The paper developing the NHS Commissioning Board offers some insights as to what a very complex organisation is being developed. Between the NHS Commissioning Board at one end and the clinical commissioning groups at the other, the variety of commissioning support agencies is growing exponentially to include regional—I think I need to amend that to subnational—arms of the NHS Commissioning Board, PCT clusters, commissioning support units, clinical senates, special clinical networks, health and well-being boards and trustees of clinical commissioning groups. Public Health England, local health improvement boards, regulators such as Monitor and the Care Quality Commission, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, local GP councils, third sector suppliers, and individual practices that are enrolled as clinical commissioning group members can also be added to this list. Indeed, patients too are becoming commissioners, as they wield personal health budgets.

This is presumably the structure to be delivered by the shadow board. I do not object to being properly prepared for these huge changes—that is very wise. However, there are some very important questions to be considered about the statutory instruments before us today. Can the Minister confirm what the timetable is, subject to the passage of the Bill? My understanding is that October 2011 is the start date for the board in shadow form as a special health authority, although the word “shadow” appears nowhere that I could find on the website. Given that the board has already recruited its chair—a matter that I will return to in a moment—can the Minister tell the House how and when other board members will be recruited, and whether the Department of Health will be using the same company of head-hunters that recommended Professor Malcolm Grant? Can he confirm that another five board members will be appointed? I am asking because I am not clear from Regulation 6 of the NHS Commissioning Board Authority Regulations, on the suspension of non-officers, as to whether that includes the chairman. I can see that it deals with the situation of the suspension of the chairman, but I am unclear as to how the chairman might be suspended in the first place, and by whom.

If the shadow board is to run from October 2011 to October 2012, I gather that at that point it transmogrifies into an executive non-departmental public body responsible for planning for 2013-14. I ask the noble Earl: is that it then? Is that the status of the quango being created to run this part of the National Health Service? We know that strategic health authorities and PCTs will be disestablished in April 2013.

I have a series of questions arising from the timetable, and I am sure other noble Lords will have as well. I am going to limit myself to two main themes, accountability and cost, after which I will have a few questions about the appointment of Professor Malcolm Grant. What powers does the NHS Commissioning Board have at this point and what budget? How many people are employed by it at present, how many will be employed by it eventually and at what cost? We know that the board will be responsible for £100 billion of taxpayers’ money. When will they start disbursing that funding and what accountability measures will have been established before April 2013, or indeed before October next year? Am I right in thinking that from yesterday the board has been established as an independent statutory body with some accountability, such as the authorisation of clinical commissioning groups? If this is indeed the case, does the new board have control of the budgets that develop the clinical commissioning groups? How will it disperse that funding? Who will be responsible for the strategic health authorities and PCT boards and their continuing delivery of healthcare in their areas? Who will be responsible for the delivery of the Nicholson challenge while Sir David Nicholson is busy, presumably, with all of the above?

I turn now to the appointment of Professor Malcolm Grant, whom I know from my work with academic organisations in the past. I have the highest respect for his current position as the head of University College London, but I think he was put in an impossible position by the Department of Health. I have now read the transcript of his interview with the Health Select Committee, where he was approved only by the casting vote of the chairman. It seems clear to me that Professor Grant had been told that it was a rubber stamp exercise and that he did not expect to be cross-examined in the robust way in which the Health Select Committee proceeded to question him—a way that we all know and cherish, particularly when a Select Committee may suspect that it might be being taken for granted.

It is unfortunate that Professor Grant was unable to explain why or if he had a passion for the National Health Service. He said:

“I find it difficult to demonstrate because I am not a patient of the NHS”.

Will the Minister take this opportunity to clarify exactly what was meant by that remark? It has had negative media coverage because it has been interpreted as meaning that Professor Grant does not use the NHS at all. That is most unfortunate.

According to the record, Professor Grant instead pointed to his 37-year marriage to a central London practice GP as his experience of the NHS. I am married to a world expert on internet safety, but it has given me neither a passion for nor a particular knowledge of IT and the internet. Much as I support my husband in his work, I am not at all sure that it is good practice to use that in a job interview. However, it raises a separate question: did the department take legal advice about whether Professor Grant’s GP wife makes him a relevant person in terms of conflicts of interest? Given that GP primary care will be dealt with directly by the NHS Commissioning Board, which I understand is to have responsibility for GP contracts, will Professor Grant have to exclude himself from any discussions and decisions that might be to the advantage or disadvantage of GPs? What a curious state of affairs that would be. In fact, the whole episode is curiouser and curiouser.

I agreed with Professor Grant in his remarks to the Select Committee about the health Bill, which he thought was completely unintelligible. I suspect that the Minister may not. I look forward to the Minister’s remarks because I know that I will be wiser as a result. I beg to move.

[Lord Warner]

My Lords, I agree with everything my noble friend has said. In particular, I would like to know when the shadow becomes substance.

It is unfortunate that we are considering these statutory instruments before we have had a chance in Committee to discuss the clauses of the Bill relating to the NHS Commissioning Board. I shall try not to trespass on the ground that we will undoubtedly cover in the Bill, but there will inevitably be some overlap.

The board’s main role is to ensure a coherent and effective commissioning system as a proper counterbalance to the NHS’s historical dominance by provider interests. In considering these statutory instruments, it is important that we are clear that this is its main role. If it is to succeed in using commissioning to improve patient health outcomes, not only individually but across populations, it will be vital that the board is not sidetracked by being given other roles that Ministers cannot find other homes for. We will discuss these issues further, but can the Minister give some assurances today that we will not end up with a situation in which the board’s empire continues to grow and its membership may not be the most effective to deal with the range of circumstances and problems that it has to deal with? Can he give an idea of the scale of the board’s budget and staffing issues?

I always travel optimistically when I see a government department produce an impact statement and I always hope that there might be the odd number or two in it. However, in these statutory instruments, the numbers are conspicuous by their absence. I would therefore like to explore with the Minister what the scale of the board’s budget and staffing will be.

It is very difficult to judge whether the governance arrangements for the board in regulations such as these are satisfactory without knowing a lot more about the scale of the operations. Could the Minister give us more information about what he anticipates the budget of the board will be in its first year of operation? Again, we are less than certain precisely when that first year of operation will be, but for argument’s sake let us fix on either 2012-13 or 2013-14—I personally do not mind which. I would like to know what he thinks this body will be responsible for in cash terms and to have some idea of what he thinks its running costs will be. We will certainly be coming back to this issue as the Bill progresses in Committee, but it would be helpful to have some idea of the scale of this body’s operation before we can judge whether the provisions in the regulations on membership of the board and the way in which it is going to be run are adequate.

This request for numbers is not just a matter of idle curiosity on my part. It relates to the question of what is the most appropriate size for this board and its committee structure. From what we have learnt so far, the board seems likely to have responsibility for spending at least £80 billion a year. I have heard figures of up to 5,000 staff being bandied about as the possible number of people that the board will employ. With an annual expenditure of this size, my first question to the Minister is: is it right to be thinking about having a board with only five non-executive members? How does this compare with a FTSE 100 company with a similar turnover? With such a turnover each year, what is likely to be the scale and nature of the committee and sub-committee structure that the board requires? Is there a danger that, with only five non-executives, the board will end up with committees or sub-committees taking decisions on large sums of public money where board non-executives are in a significant minority in those decision-making committees? Certainly at first blush, the governance structure for the large sums of public money that this board will be disposing of looks potentially weak compared, for example, with a big local authority. Are the Government sticking with five non-executives or do they contemplate having a larger number of non-executives on this board?

Having made this comparison with local government, I will turn to the issue of the board and its committees meeting in public. As I understand the regulations, there is no requirement for the board or its committees to meet in public other than when the board presents its annual report. Given the sums of public money likely to be involved, this seems to me totally unsatisfactory. As someone who was a chief officer in a big local authority for six years, I thought it was good for my soul to have to argue my case in public. I think most members of elected local authorities accept that their way of having to account for large sums of public money is to talk about how it is going to be spent and to account for it in a public arena. I cannot see why this board should not be required, as a matter of course, to meet in public and conduct its discussions in a transparent way, except where perhaps personnel or commercial issues are involved. Can the Minister say why the regulations do not require this, when the Government themselves tend to make rather a song and dance about how they prefer there to be much more transparency in public bodies?

Finally, I turn to the issue of board competence and training. I was a little startled to learn of some of the answers provided to the Health Select Committee by the Government’s candidate to chair the board. Of course, there was a refreshing honesty, as my noble friend has said, about the way he described the Bill as “completely unintelligible”, and many Members of this House seem to agree with him, judging by the number of amendments that they have put down. However, more puzzling was his understanding of the board’s relationship with the Secretary of State under the terms of the mandate provisions in Clause 20 of the Bill. He seemed to believe that the Secretary of State would hand over the mandate for two or three years and then leave things to the board. Clause 20 makes it absolutely clear that the Secretary of State can issue a fresh mandate before the beginning of each financial year as well as modify it, particularly when there are exceptional circumstances. The Secretary of State also has extensive powers in Clause 17 to issue regulations that lay down standing rules on how the board conducts its affairs. Can the Minister tell us more about the arrangements for induction training of non-executives and their chair, so that there is no misunderstanding on the part of the non-executives about what the board can and cannot do?

I could go on because there were many other issues that were raised, but I will save those for Committee. In conclusion, I regard these regulations as looking somewhat feeble for a body operating on the scale that the Government seem to envisage and in such a complex environment. We will come back to some of these issues in Committee. In the mean time, I would welcome the Minister’s answers to my questions.

Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Thornton and Lord Warner

Wednesday 9th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments 93, 150 and 151. On Second Reading, many noble Lords expressed their disquiet at the inclusion in the Bill of the HFEA and the HTA. At the time, I wondered if they were included because the Minister’s department insisted that the Department of Health had to offer something up to the Bill, so the poor old HFEA and HTA were the sacrificial lambs. Indeed, in its own review of the arm’s-length bodies, the Department of Health gives a much more measured suggestion of the deliberation and consultation before decisions were taken about the HFEA and HTA over a timescale that is the life of this Parliament. Unless something has changed about the expected length of this Parliament, it seems precipitate and unnecessary to include these bodies in the Bill.

In a meeting convened by the Minister—the noble Earl, Lord Howe—to discuss this important matter with interested parties, which I was pleased to attend, he was concerned to reassure us about the consultation and discussion to take place before decisions were reached. We can add to those reassurances the proposal, as I understand it, that in the next Session—in other words, after May 2012—primary legislation will be introduced to establish a new science regulator in the department. If that is the case, the passage of that legislation would allow proper consultation and scrutiny across the field including the work of the HFEA and the HTA, which is the way in which such reforms should be carried out. So I ask again: why is it necessary for these bodies to be included in the Bill?

The HFEA and the HTA almost symbolise the concerns that noble Lords have expressed in relation to the constitutional propriety of the Bill in giving Ministers powers to amend primary legislation. Both organisations would have their work and their regulation fragmented unnecessarily when they need to be left alone to get on with the jobs that they do very well—although there is always room for improvement—until a proper period of consultation and pre-legislative scrutiny, which I am sure the noble Earl would wish to have, can precede the introduction of the science regulator Bill or whatever it will be called. That is the way to proceed.

What do these bodies do? The HTA licenses and inspects organisations that store and use human tissue for purposes such as research, patient treatment and post-mortem examination, teaching and public exhibitions. It also gives approval for organ and bone marrow donations from living people, including anatomy and stem cells and cord blood; public display—that is, the public display of any human body parts in various forms—post mortems; coroners; and transplants.

The advances made by science throw up new and sometimes complex ethical issues for the HTA to address. The cavalier use of body parts for research without the knowledge or consent of patients and their families was a huge scandal, leading to public indignation. Many in your Lordships’ House will recall the time and the thought given to the creation of a regulatory framework that would command public confidence. I fail to see what has changed that can allow any slackening off of the responsibility that the HTA bears for the use of human tissue.

The HFEA is the UK’s independent regulator of treatment using eggs and sperm and of treatment and research involving human embryos. It sets standards for and issues licences to centres and provides authoritative information for the public, particularly for people seeking treatment, donor-conceived people and donors. Very importantly, it also determined a policy framework for fertility issues which are sometimes ethically and clinically complex. The HFEA Act 2008 includes provisions for research on different types of embryos and changes the definition of legal parenthood for cases involving assisted reproduction. Therefore, the work of both bodies is of enormous scientific importance apart from anything else.

The arm’s-length body review in July 2010 concluded that the HFEA carries out essential functions which satisfy,

“the criteria for being undertaken by an arm’s-length body”.

The review states that the HFEA,

“deals with issues that are judicially and ethically complex and contentious”.

The HFEA is a world-respected model which has been used by other jurisdictions to deal with extremely technical and legally complex areas of practice. We have to ask what will happen to the high level of expertise and experience in both organisations and whether it will be in the public interest to transfer regulatory functions to other organisations where this knowledge may be lost to the detriment of patient safety.

I know that some noble Lords, particularly some of our very respected medics, for sometimes differing reasons have expressed the view that time has moved on since the original reason was established for setting up these bodies, human fertilisation is not the novelty that it once was, these medical procedures no longer need the attention of their own regulator and therefore change is necessary. That is a powerful argument but I disagree with it, or at least I have yet to be convinced. It seems to me that the powerful reasons that brought these two bodies into existence, and the reason we in Parliament paid such close attention to establishing their duties, responsibilities and independence, are still as potent today as they were when they were founded. These are not primarily medical or scientific reasons but concern the need to maintain public confidence in the uses to which human tissue is put, and sometimes in the very controversial issues arising out of human fertility and procreation.

Time and consideration need to be given to the contribution to scientific research made by the HTA and the HFEA, and, of course, they should carry out their respective functions in a cost-effective and efficient manner with appropriate public accountability. We may wish to see change in the way that the HTA and the HFEA functions are carried out but I believe many of the changes needed could be achieved without their inclusion in the Bill. Change should be helpful in achieving the broader stated aims of reducing bureaucracy and saving money rather than simply focusing on a reduction in the number of arm’s-length bodies. By and large, by the way, I believe that both bodies have sought to make and have succeeded in making improvements in their work and functions in recent times. I believe that more now even than at Second Reading, given the Government’s proposals on research. As the proposals for the reorganisation of the NHS are discussed it seems to me that the future of the HTA and the HFEA need more time and much more consideration. Apart from anything else, the CQC, which it is proposed should become the healthcare regulator for the HTA and fertility treatment, will have neither the time nor the expertise to carry out this function until it has swallowed the regulation of the whole of the rest of medical and social care. One might imagine that if a scandal arises in four or five years’ time regarding either fertility regulation or the use of human tissues, the excuse will be given that the CQC was too preoccupied with the rest of its enormous brief to give these matters the important attention that they warrant. I beg to move.

[Lord Warner]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendments 92 and 93 in part in a spirit of helpfulness—I hope that is the case—to the Minister as I have traversed the same ground as him on Department of Health arm’s-length bodies. In 2003-04, I was the Minister who reviewed DH arm’s-length bodies and halved their number. Therefore, I cannot claim to be against reducing the number of Department of Health arm’s-length bodies. Indeed, my sins are fully catalogued by this Government in annexe B of their document on the arm’s-length body review, which was published last year. Therefore, I own up fully to these past misdemeanours. However, as I have previously said about the Government’s own arm’s-length body review, although I do not necessarily agree with every aspect of it, it comprises a serious, comprehensive, clear and coherent set of proposals, unlike some of the things which emerged from other departments under this Bill. Therefore, I do not in any way wish to argue that it was not a thorough piece of work.