Baroness Blackstone
Main Page: Baroness Blackstone (Labour - Life peer)
Lord Bethell
The noble Baroness touches on an incredibly important point. Undoubtedly, accident and emergency services are suffering a big spike in attendance by children and young people. I travelled to 20 accident and emergency wards in December and saw for myself the long queues of children. Clearly, something needs to be done to guide children away from accident and emergency. That is why this Government are doing an enormous amount to improve primary care services by investing in the 111 service and treatment-in-a-day services, for example, which can move people from A&E to create space for those in the most need.
Baroness Blackstone (Ind Lab)
My Lords, I pick up on my noble friend’s question about staff shortages, to which the Minister did not reply. For many years now, there has been a serious shortage of paediatric nurses with the specialist skills needed to work in ICU. However many of these units we have around the country, they will not be very effective if we do not have the skilled staff to man them. What are the Government doing to fill these places where there are shortages?
Lord Bethell
The Government are investing in 50,000 new nurses, many of whom will be trained for exactly the kind of services that the noble Baroness described. In particular, mental health investment is a big focus for the Government, with plans to have spent £12.5 billion on mental health care in 2018-19. Our NHS funding Bill, which will receive its Second Reading in the Commons today, will explain exactly how much money will be spent.