NHS: Abuse of Nurses

Lord Bird Excerpts

Tuesday 5th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

As well as various programmes such as the NHS violence prevention and reduction standard, against which trusts are measured and held accountable, there are a number of different local initiatives to see what works and what does not in different places. There are a number of innovative ones, and I will give one example, rather than take up too much time. The No Force First initiative at Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust has resulted in a 46% reduction in physical assaults against staff. There are a number of other examples that I could lay out in detail.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

There are many opportunities to stop the violence. My nephew is involved in security in a major hospital, and he says the pressure they are under is enormous. They have to work very long hours to make the necessary money. We must look at those kinds of policing operations within our major hospitals.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

The noble Lord is absolutely right: it is not a simple issue, and people abuse for lots of different reasons. We are looking at different ways to deal with this, including training staff to deal with violence from patients with dementia or mental illness. We are also looking at various security measures. Money is being made available for trusts and primary care to take security measures, including the installation of cameras and screens for receptionists.

Ambulance Queues: Health Outcomes

Lord Bird Excerpts

Thursday 13th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for drawing my attention to the report and the work of that committee. I will commit to reading the report and look forward to future discussions with my noble friend and many noble Lords across the House.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

Would it be possible at this time to talk also about preventing the next crisis and the crisis after that? Are we not always chasing something? The NHS, which does not spend a large amount of money on prevention, is now being hoist by its own petard,

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

The noble Lord raises a very important point. One of the things the NHS is looking at in more detail, and something we will discuss in forthcoming debates on the Health and Social Care Bill, is how we move a system culturally to not only treat patients once they are ill or need treatment, and work in terms of prevention and encouraging healthier lifestyles. When patients are kept too long in hospital, they can lose certain facilities such as muscle function, so we need to look at prevention as opposed to just treatment. Getting the right balance is something that the NHS and the Department of Health and Social Care are looking at closely.

Covid-19: Poverty

Lord Bird Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

I feel inspired by the noble Lord’s passion for the subject, but it is not fair or reasonable to suggest that death rates in the country are driven by the electoral cycle. Far from it—this Government have been extremely committed to the obesity strategy, not least because of the personal story of the Prime Minister. We have not abolished Public Health England; we have redefined it as two organisations, UKHSA and the OHP. The impact of those will be profound.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

Is the Minister aware of the social mobility pledge, which is trying to remove impediments to people applying for highly skilled jobs so that they do not follow the route that their families may have followed into underpaid jobs, where they remain in poverty for ever? I would very much like him to look at this. I support the pledge and many hundreds of businesses are following that example and removing these impediments.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

The noble Lord speaks movingly about this important issue and social mobility is itself a massive issue for the country. It does not fall directly within the remit of the Department of Health, but the NHS itself can be an enlightened employer in this respect. Many families have seen great advances in their personal development there, and I hope that it has a spirit of meritocracy and opportunity. I would be glad to write to the noble Lord to share with him the kinds of initiatives designed to increase social mobility that there are within the NHS.

Covid-19: Obesity

Lord Bird Excerpts

Wednesday 21st April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for his question. It is for others in the post-mortem process to pronounce on the exact cause of deaths during Covid, but it is an unavoidable fact that, of the 2.5 million Covid deaths reported by the end of February, 2.2 million were in countries where more than half of the population is classified as overweight; that includes Britain. This is a stark fact that, as my noble friend rightly points out, is sinking in among the British public. We want to use this fact as an inflection point—it is an opportunity —to give people the inspiration they need to take the necessary steps towards healthy and fit living.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

Is it not important to bear in mind the fact that people who are poor and obese are living in a permanent emergency? That emergency starts in the early years of their lives and carries on; they take food and do many short-term things. We must break this emergency and remove the poor from it through education, social opportunity and giving people jobs that raise their wages. Also, social security is often used as a way of saying, “Go over there and we’ll forget about you for a certain period of time.” It is the emergency that they live in that we have to challenge.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I defer to the noble Lord’s expertise and authority in speaking on behalf of those who live in deprivation. He is a valued spokesman for people in such conditions. However, on his analysis, I do not think that poor people cannot lead healthy and fit lives. I do not believe that they cannot make the right decisions for their futures. I have the utmost respect for those who live in poverty; it is for us to give them the inspiration and knowledge that they need to make the right decisions.

Covid-19 Update

Lord Bird Excerpts

Monday 30th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, the Government—and I personally—are extremely interested in this area. Early findings of a study by the Coronavirus Immunology Consortium and Public Health England, which have not been peer reviewed yet, suggest that a strong cellular immune response is likely to be present in the majority of adults six months after infection. At present, there is not enough evidence to rule out people who have positive T cell responses or antibodies to Covid-19 from potentially still playing a role in transmitting the virus to others. However, further research on the level of sterilising immunity provided by natural infection should be available from the SIREN study and the Oxford healthcare workers study before the end of the year. I look forward to the results of those studies very much.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

My Lords, I remind that House that not so long ago the Government put their arms around the homeless and removed them from the streets. They did a highly commendable job because it was the first time that a Government had taken responsibility for rough sleepers en masse. They did not quite finish the job because it was difficult to bring them in. Can we also put our arms around the roughly 200,000 people who, according to the LGA, will fall homeless through eviction? The best thing that we can do is to keep people in their houses. It cuts the cost of poverty and it cuts the cost of homelessness. When people slip into homelessness, the costs double.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I am enormously grateful to the noble Lord for his very generous comments. I commend him for his advocacy both in the instance of Covid and for his lifelong commitment to standing up for the homeless. He is right that the homeless are undoubtedly super-vulnerable to a pandemic such as Covid and that there is a finance problem for the charities which look after those who live on the streets. He is right that those who have trouble paying their rent and face eviction are in a particularly difficult position. That is why we have put in place a mortgage relief scheme, continue to support the furlough scheme and keep in mind the plight of those who struggle to pay their household bills.

Childhood Obesity

Lord Bird Excerpts

Monday 15th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford]

My noble friend is a great champion on this subject and has been an expert in it for a long period. Through the prevention Green Paper, which is due to be published this summer, we are determined to look at a range of further options to tackle obesity. We have publicly committed to taking action on infant and baby food. She will know that we are making progress on the reformulation section of the obesity strategy. However, we have further to go, and I am grateful to her for her Question on this issue.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

Is it possible to consider something very clever? Rather than accepting that the poorest among us are the ones who deal with obesity, why do we not give them a Waitrose lunch and dinner and subsidise it, and stop having to pay further upline in the NHS? Why do we not start thinking globally rather than just a bit at a time?

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford]

I thank the noble Lord for his question; I hope that we can occasionally think cleverly in government. He is absolutely right that obesity is strongly correlated with socioeconomic deprivation, and that is why chapter 2 of our plan tries to target those areas that are most affected by delivering a childhood obesity trailblazer programme, working with local authorities to address this. They have been provided with £100,000 in the first instance to try to improve the impact of the childhood obesity plan. We shall see how that goes, but I am very happy to pass on his suggestion.

The NHS

Lord Bird Excerpts

Thursday 5th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bird (CB)]

I am really pleased to be talking in this debate about the National Health Service. I started life in St Mary’s Hospital. My mother, a lovely Irish lady, said that I was the most difficult birth because instead of it taking 10 Woodbines to birth me, it took 20. I should not really be here: I should be dead, because I come from poverty. I am in the House of Lords because of poverty, to try to dismantle poverty and to prevent poverty happening.

I do not want to sound like Mark Antony at Caesar’s funeral, but talking about the National Health Service raises a number of questions for me. One is: are we talking about the National Health Service or the “I will get you back to health” service? My problem is that when I look around, I look at the big, ugly sun that sets and rises over all of us, which is poverty. According to a friend of mine who worked at St Thomas’ Hospital, 60% to 70% of the people the NHS has to deal with come from poverty. Because they come from poverty, they present their poverty in many ways and one of the big ways is in their health.

I will quote two human beings. One, John Newton, is the director of Public Health England, who makes the point that 40% of all illnesses that present in hospitals and the National Health Service are preventable and 23% of deaths need never have happened.

I have a quotation from 1944, from the MP for Rochdale, Dr Hyacinth Morgan, who said:

“The whole question of social medicine, with the questions of good milk supply, prevention of disease, good food and nutrition, good housing, good recreational facilities, prevention of mental disability in its early stages—all this has been left out of the White Paper”.—[Official Report, Commons, 16/3/1944; col. 494.]


Looking at the National Health Service over the past 70 years, I would say that it is an absolutely wonderful invention that has saved many members of my family. I have yet to use it, but, when it does come along, I am sure you will give me a brilliant send-off.

The point is that, unless we find a way, instead of spending 5% of the national health budget on prevention, to move it mainstream, we will always be worshipping at the altar of the accomplished fact. We will always be dealing with health rather than the terrible reality that exists behind it, which is the fact that we live in a poverty culture; we have poverty capitalism, where the poorest among us have to resort to the kind of food that can lead only to bad health. Until we get rid of poverty capitalism, we are not really going anywhere, and we will be talking about more and more needs for the National Health Service. The National Health Service will become even bigger unless we tackle the elephant in the room, which is poverty.

Brexit: Food Standards Agency

Lord Bird Excerpts

Thursday 26th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord O’Shaughnessy]

I do not think it is a laughing matter; it is a matter of the utmost seriousness concerning the security and safety of this country. It affects not only food safety but chemicals, medicines and aerospace. We have set out our plans for associate membership and others forms of relationship that will provide that information to our systems. Equally, information that makes a massive contribution to the safety of EU citizens is also fed back to the EU.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

My Lords, is it possible that the Food Standards Agency will become so strong after Brexit that it will actually do something about the appalling poor-quality food that most poor people have to eat, which leads to our hospitals being filled up by people with all sorts of nutritional problems? Will the Food Standards Agency get behind addressing the problem of class-divided food?

[Lord O’Shaughnessy]

The noble Lord raises an important issue. However, it is important to distinguish what the Food Standards Agency is responsible for and what it is not. It is responsible for making sure that food is safe. Nutritional value is a different responsibility that accrues to the department and to Public Health England, and we have taken many significant actions, including reducing sugar content in drinks and food, to make sure that precisely the issues he is talking about are dealt with.

Emergency Hospital Admissions

Lord Bird Excerpts

Wednesday 7th March 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Bird]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to reduce and prevent avoidable emergency hospital admissions.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord O’Shaughnessy) (Con)]

My Lords, NHS England and NHS Improvement are implementing a number of national programmes to transform NHS services so that, where clinically appropriate, a patient’s care is managed without the need for a stay in hospital. This is being achieved through services becoming better integrated across health and social care, as well as managing hospital care differently, so that more patients are treated as day patients in A&E or streamed to see a general practitioner.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

I thank the Minister for that Answer. The recent report of the National Audit Office stated that nearly 25% of people who go into hospital do so in an avoidable situation, which could be sorted out in the community. This is a clear case of why we need more prevention. What extra thinking and resources will the Government bring into the community so that we do not have the ridiculous situation of such people going into hospital, where we have the problem of a shortage of nurses and all the other things that knock on?

[Lord O’Shaughnessy]

The noble Lord makes an important point. It was good to study the report and the noble Lord is right about avoidable hospital admissions. Two changes are happening. One is GP extended access, which now has 95% coverage across the country—that is, evenings, weekends and so on—as primary care. We also have interesting results coming from the new models of care programme. I highlight one that is happening in mid-Nottinghamshire. It is called PRISM and it is a virtual ward for at-risk patients which enables multidisciplinary teams to look at vulnerable people before they come to hospital. It has reduced A&E attendance for those aged over 80 by 17%, which is significant. It is precisely this kind of thing that will make the difference that we need.

Brexit: Mental Health Research Funding

Lord Bird Excerpts

Thursday 23rd November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

As I said, we continue to bid for funds that we can draw down, and the Government are committed to underwriting any successful bids as part of the Horizon 2020 programme. Our intention is to continue in that programme. Obviously, if that is not the case, we will have funding available to support health research in this area, but our intention is to continue with the partnership that has proved so fruitful.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

Will the Minister accept that, in spite of all the wonderful research, Britain is falling way behind at the point of need and that on the streets and among the poorest in this country, mental health support has completely disappeared?

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

I totally do not accept that proposition. Mental health is certainly a problem in this country. One in six adults and one in 10 children has a common mental health disorder, and those figures are pretty devastating. However, the Government have been increasing funding for mental health. It has gone up by 8.4% over the last two years, so there is funding. There are more staff in mental health trusts and we have pledged to treat 70,000 more children. Therefore, we are putting the money in and getting better results.