Lord Pickles
Main Page: Lord Pickles (Conservative - Life peer)
Baroness Manzoor
Basically, the workforce proposals will depend not only on the outcome of the spending review; as the noble Baroness mentioned, my noble friend Lady Harding is also being tasked to carry out a review. Her programme of work will be to develop a workforce implementation programme that agrees, in advance of the spending review, the additional investment that is needed for the training, education and continuing development of the workforce through the HEE budget, which is yet to be set by the Government. The workforce implementation programme will be published later in 2019. Of course, how that review is undertaken is a matter for my noble friend, but it will be sharp, rigorous and clear, and her findings will be available to the Secretary of State by the spring.
Lord Pickles (Con)
My Lords, I have a slight advantage over other noble Lords in that I was a fan of my noble friend Lord O’Shaughnessy long before he became a Member of this House.
My noble friend is right to say that these are amazing sums of money and indeed it is a very serious document. However, it bears some relationship to earlier long-term plans, by this Government and previous Governments of different hues, in so far as it talks about cutting down on waste, improving best practice, co-operation with local authorities, improving training and a shift towards personal care—all of which would release precious resources. However, our success in achieving all those things has been fairly variable. Can my noble friend tell me why the plan will be different this time? How will its success be monitored, and will regular reports of the monitoring of how efficiencies are dealt with be made to this House?
Baroness Manzoor
I thank my noble friend; as he says, there is a challenge. For the record, since everyone around the House, quite rightly, has praised my noble friend Lord O’Shaughnessy, I am not his replacement; I am standing in for him.
It is an interesting question; we know that publishing this document alone will not translate all the plans and objectives into reality. As I have already said, that is why we have asked the NHS to develop a clear implementation framework by April, to set out the commitments that should be delivered by local systems to ensure that there is transparency for patients and the public. This is not something that has come out of the ether from nowhere; we are building on success. It is not a radically different plan; we are picking out the best of what we need to achieve. The plan builds on what has been achieved in recent years and the learning from previous reform programmes. It has already benefited from widespread engagement during its development, working with organisations that represent over 3.5 million people to ensure that its vision and aims are the right ones.