Health: Online Services

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Monday 23rd April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

On that specific point, NHS England is providing £45 million through the general practice forward view to promote online consultations. That is to ensure that they are available in general practice across the country. The noble Baroness will be aware of the GP at Hand practice, which is one practice in west London offering these services, but we are seeking to expand them, and NHS England, the CQC and others are providing regulatory support during that process.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, can the Minister explain the process? If someone chooses to access an online GP service, what happens to their registration with the GP with whom they are already registered—if they are registered? Is the process clear to each patient?

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

That is an excellent question. It is important to distinguish between the independent sector and the NHS. The CQC report was about the independent sector, so a patient would continue to be registered with their NHS GP practice and have an augmenting consultation, if you like. With GP at Hand, as it is an NHS practice, they would switch their registration. One issue that has come up is whether people have full enough information about that switching, which is one thing that NHS England is reviewing in the independent review that it has commissioned about the success or otherwise of that service.

Children and Young People: Mental Health

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Wednesday 28th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

There has undoubtedly been an impact on mental health nursing. In fact, the widest definition of the mental health and learning disability workforce according to the latest workforce stats is up by around 3,000 full-time equivalent posts. But we agree that more needs to be done. That is why there is an ambition to bring in 4,400 more mental health staff to support children and young people over the next few years. It is also reassuring to know that there are 8,000 mental health nurses in training at the moment.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister will be aware that the incidence of mental health issues in children of primary school age is growing. Whatever the causes, they are almost always amplified and exacerbated by the onset of puberty and the transition to secondary schooling. What emphasis is being put on identifying and helping to meet the unmet need in primary schools, and who is undertaking that work?

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

That is an excellent question. A terrifying statistic is that 8,000 of those under 10 years old are suffering from severe depression. The designated leaders will be in every school; that is the ambition. We are also rolling out mental health support teams to support all schools, both primary and secondary, so I can reassure the noble Baroness that primary schools are within the scope of the plans.

NHS: Charitable Donations

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Thursday 22nd February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord O’Shaughnessy]

That is an important point. We are not yet in a position where we have mandatory collection of all that unit pricing data. That will happen from the next financial year onwards, so we will be able to publish that data. It is important, though, to resist the urge to send out to people information itemising costs, precisely for the deterrence reasons that I mentioned.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, we can all agree that the National Health Service being free at the point of use is probably the single most valued thing about it for everybody. Personally, I would not want to see that changed or compromised in any way. However, despite the Minister’s reasonable point about putting people off, does he not think that it would help people to value the health service more if they better understood the real cost of what it takes to treat what are in some cases quite minor ailments? Further, could it not help with the pressure on GPs to overprescribe certain drugs, the use of which we would really do well to reduce?

[Lord O’Shaughnessy]

I think we are getting to a sensible position here: we want that transparency about what things cost in general, but not specific to each patient because of the concern that it might put people off. There is a lot more information available now than there ever has been about what items cost. What is critical—what we have learned—is that when people miss appointments, for example, which costs about £1 billion per year, there is a good opportunity to demonstrate what that cost is. But as regards what they incur as they go through the experience of healthcare, we worry about the deterrence.

Agency Nurses

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Wednesday 10th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

The number of uses of the “break glass” clause has actually fallen since April 2016, which was the peak. This shows that there has been a much more planned use of bringing in extra staff as they are needed, rather than an ad hoc response, which was what it was designed to address.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, further to the question from my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley, now that the noble Lord’s department has had “Social Care” appended to its title, does he agree that community and district nurses must be a vital part of the interface between healthcare and social care? As he has indicated that he accepts that there are fewer of them, what is being done to ensure that there are more in the future?

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

That is an incredibly important point. We know the role that district and community nurses have, particularly in the interface between hospitals and social care. I have pointed out that more nurses will be trained. That will provide an opportunity to recruit to those areas which have not seen the increases that other areas of nursing have done, including district and community.

Young Women: Self-Harm

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Thursday 16th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right to highlight the importance of schools in dealing with this. It is not just a health issue. Indeed it is not just about education either, but involves a cross-government approach. I would be very keen for her to write to me with the specific details of what she is describing—it does not sound like a positive development. Much more positively, more than 1,000 secondary schools have now had mental health first aid training for at least one teacher in the school, and the ambition is to extend that to all secondary schools. She will also know that there will very shortly be a children and young people mental health Green Paper, which I think will have quite ambitious actions for both schools and the health service to support young people with mental health problems.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, building on the Question from the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, does the noble Lord agree with me that bullying in schools can start very early, well before secondary school, and can give rise to very severe mental health issues among those who are bullied? Does he also agree with me that schools struggle to deal with this issue, partly because they are unclear about how to balance their duties of care to victims and to perpetrators, who often have issues of their own? Can he say in what way he is working with his colleagues in the Department for Education to make sure that primary schools have access to good resources to meet this, including programmes such as Place2Be?