Asked by: Lord Beecham (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the conclusions from the Migration Advisory Committee in their report Review of the Shortage Occupation List: 2020, published on 29 September, regarding the consequences of the end of freedom of movement between the UK and EU on the recruitment of staff in the social care sector, what plans they have to address low wages in social care.
Answered by Lord Bethell
The Government does not have direct responsibility for pay awards in adult social care in the same way as for other areas of the public sector. The Government nonetheless maintains oversight of the social care system and we are committed to raising the profile of the social care sector. The Government expects local authorities to commission care at the rate that allows providers to employ the staff they need to deliver quality care.
We are taking action to support adult social care providers to recruit domestically. In order to attract more people to the sector we ran a national recruitment campaign. We are working with the Department for Work and Pensions to promote adult social care careers to jobseekers, and we have launched an online recruitment tool as part of this.
Asked by: Lord Beecham (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to reduce the number of people waiting more than 12 months for hospital treatment.
Answered by Lord Bethell
The restoration of NHS services should ensure that clinically urgent patients continue to be treated first, with priority then given to the longest waiting patients, specifically those breaching or at risk of breaching 52 weeks by the end of March 2021. Continued access to independent sector capacity will help support the recovery and restoration of elective services.
In addition, the Prime Minister has announced £3 billion of extra National Health Service funding to support the NHS this winter, and this includes ensuring the retention of the Nightingale hospital surge capacity and continued access to independent hospitals capacity to help meet patient demand. In the longer term, the NHS Long Term Plan aims to increase the amount of planned surgery year on year to reduce the waiting list. This will be supported by an NHS budget increase of £33.9 billion in cash terms by 2023/24.
Asked by: Lord Beecham (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to launch an inquiry into (1) the impact of the suspension of nurses and allied health professionals from taking calls to the NHS 111 COVID-19 Clinical Assessment Service, and (2) related safety issues identified through call audits of that service.
Answered by Lord Bethell
The Government has always been clear that there will be opportunities to look back, analyse and reflect on all aspects of the response to COVID-19. As the Prime Minister has said, this will include an independent inquiry at the appropriate time.
The COVID-19 Clinical Assessment Service is regularly monitored and audited to ensure its safety and to safeguard the quality of clinical advice given to patients.
Asked by: Lord Beecham (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what consultation they undertook prior to the decision that patients may not order prescriptions by telephone from 1 September; and what assessment they have made of the impact of that decision on (1) individuals, and (2) general practitioners.
Answered by Lord Bethell
We are informed by NHS England and NHS Improvement that the National Health Service has not nationally cancelled any facility for ordering repeat prescriptions. While ordering online has proven hugely popular because of the convenience and ease, this will not be possible for everyone. Ordering of repeat prescriptions is for surgeries to arrange locally. However, national guidance is clear that every local practice must put in place a system for prescriptions, which can include online and phone orders, to meet the needs of their own patients.
Asked by: Lord Beecham (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, in the light of the level of mortality in private care homes due to COVID-19, what steps they intend to take (1) to facilitate the provision of such care by local authorities, and (2) to improve conditions in private care homes.
Answered by Lord Bethell
Under the Care Act 2014, local authorities are required to shape their whole local markets to ensure that they are sustainable, diverse and offer high quality care and support for people in their local area.
On 15 April, the Department published COVID-19: Our Action Plan for Adult Social Care, which set out measures that the Government and other parts of the system were taking to support people in receipt of adult social care, both at home and in other settings. A copy of the Action Plan is attached. On 15 May, the Department published the Care Home Support Package backed by the £600 million Infection Control Fund. It sets out measures on infection prevention control, comprehensive testing, clinical support, local authority care homes support plans and support to build the workforce.
The Care Quality Commission conducts robust inspections to make sure that service providers meet quality and safety standards.
Asked by: Lord Beecham (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have, if any, to compensate (1) staff, and (2) residents, of care homes who have been adversely affected by shortages of personal protective equipment.
Answered by Lord Bethell
There are currently no plans to compensate staff or residents of care homes.
The Government has published a range of guidance to help care providers reduce the spread of infection. The guidance sets out advice for those affected on how to minimise risks of transmission, through good infection control practices, and set out some of the steps that local authorities and the National Health Service should take to support care providers through the pandemic. We will continue to update this guidance as is required.
For supplies of personal protective equipment, we encourage all care providers to continue to use their business as usual supply chains. Where this is not possible, we are supporting the existing supplier network by providing stock of PPE to 11 wholesalers for adult social care.
If a provider has been unsuccessful in obtaining PPE through these routes, they can approach their Local Resilience Forum (LRF) to set out their PPE needs. If they are unable to access PPE through their LRF, a provider can raise a request for an emergency pack of PPE through the National Supply Disruption Response system.
We are working with e-commerce experts to launch a Parallel Supply Chain, a new web-based system for procuring PPE which will be managed in line with the published guidance from Public Health England, integrated with NHS Supply Chain's central PPE logistic operations and shipped directly to providers via Royal Mail.??Over one million items have been delivered via the portal, which is now rolling out nationally to small residential and domiciliary care providers.
Asked by: Lord Beecham (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of reports that directors of social care in England issued warnings two years ago about the need for better supply plans for personal protective equipment in the event of a pandemic.
Answered by Lord Bethell
We have been developing pandemic response plans for many years working closely with our national and sector partners, including adult social care. Since the start of this outbreak we have continued to work with the adult social care sector and public health experts to put in place support for social care, including around personal protective equipment (PPE).
In mid-March, social care providers across England received an emergency drop of over seven million PPE items from the pandemic flu stockpile.
As of 29 May, we have released 127 million items of PPE to designated wholesalers for onward sale to social care providers. Between 6 April and 31 May we have authorised the release of over 124 million items of PPE to local resilience forums to help them respond to urgent local spikes in need across the adult social care system We have also mobilised a National Supply Disruption Response system to respond to emergency PPE requests, including for the social care sector.
We have developed a parallel supply chain with almost 3,000 providers to support the normal supply chain before the national roll out. This is a dedicated channel for critical PPE and core PPE products for Covid-19 are flowing through this. As of 15 May, over a million items have been delivered via the portal, which is now rolling out nationally to general practitioners and small residential and domiciliary care providers.
Asked by: Lord Beecham (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to address mental health problems affecting children, following the increase in the number of children under 11 contacting Childline because of suicidal thoughts and feelings since 2015–16.
Answered by Lord Bethell
We are taking action to protect the mental health of all children and young people. Following on from our Green Paper on transforming children and young people’s mental health, we are:
- incentivising every school or college to identify and train a Senior Lead for Mental Health;
- creating new mental health support teams in and near schools and colleges; and
- piloting a four-week waiting time to allow swifter access to specialist NHS services for those children and young people who need them.
The Green Paper has the potential to significantly improve early intervention and prevention, along with expanding the current children and young people’s mental health workforce.
Asked by: Lord Beecham (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the practice of NHS trusts of using non-disclosure agreements in cases of bullying and harassment affecting staff members.
Answered by Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
No assessment has been made of the practice of National Health Service trusts using non-disclosure agreements in cases of bullying and harassment affecting staff members.
Any clause in a settlement agreement or contract of employment which purports to prevent a member of staff from a making a protected disclosure would have no legal effect. Such clauses are often referred to as ‘gagging’ clauses and have no place in the NHS. No organisation can to put such a provision in a settlement agreement or employment contract.
Since 2013, all agreements where confidentiality clauses are used, also require the inclusion of a clause which makes it crystal clear to the parties concerned, that regardless of what other clauses are used in the agreement, an individual will always be able to make a protected disclosure in the public interest and/or raise concerns about patient safety and care in accordance with their professional and ethical obligations.
The NHS Long Term Plan commits £2 million per year to tackling violence against staff and bullying in the NHS. The Plan states that “To make the NHS a consistently great place to work, we will seek to shape a modern employment culture for the NHS – promoting flexibility, wellbeing and career development, and redoubling our efforts to address discrimination, violence and bullying and harassment”.
Asked by: Lord Beecham (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to investigate claims of exploitative employment practices by Malaysian manufacturers of medical gloves for use by the NHS.
Answered by Lord O'Shaughnessy
In line with the Government’s policy and leadership on modern slavery, the Department take any allegations of this kind very seriously and we are working with NHS Supply Chain to ensure that these issues are investigated as a matter of urgency.