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Walk-in GP Clinics
4. Mr. Paul Truswell (Pudsey): What plans he has to ensure the proper regulation of walk-in private GP clinics. [38674]
The Minister for Public Health (Ms Tessa Jowell): General practitioners involved in private clinics are subject to scrutiny by the General Medical Council in the same way as all other doctors.
Mr. Truswell: Did not the recent survey in Health Which? paint a particularly depressing picture of people paying between £36 and £250 to see a GP who did not know them from Adam; who had no access to their medical records; who was not trained to the exacting standards of the NHS; who was not subject to a proper complaints procedure; and who was not registered with the local health authority? Quite apart from those concerns, is this not one more chilling indictment of the previous Government's mentality, which gave rise to this form of taxi-rank medicine?
Ms Jowell: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The account in Health Which? of prescribing by a number of independent walk-in health centres made disturbing reading. It is not in patients' interests--which are the single most important thing--to go to a GP who does not know them, or their medical history, or what they are being prescribed. That is why our efforts are going into building a modern and dependable health service which is led by quality, combining technical excellence with the responsive and flexible meeting of patients' needs. In pursuit of that, my hon. Friend will join me today in welcoming the allocation of £4.2 million to drive down waiting lists for his constituents, honouring a promise made by the Government at the time of the election a year ago.
Mrs. Marion Roe (Broxbourne): Will private GPs be able to make secondary recommendations? What is the Minister's view of the relationship between private GPs and the NHS?
Ms Jowell: With great respect, I think that I have made the situation absolutely clear. Our concern is with the interests of patients. It is not in their interests to shop around and to go to several different GPs. They will receive the best care by going to a GP who knows them and whose services and care are supported by state-of-the-art medicine, delivering health care to patients where they need it.
Dr. Peter Brand (Isle of Wight): I am very disappointed that the Minister is ducking the question. Does she not agree that our experience with slimming clinics, some cosmetic surgery clinics, and now private walk-in clinics, is such that we need a regulatory mechanism that is more beefed up than that existing at present?
Ms Jowell: We do keep any such development under close review, but the medical conduct of GPs who operate in those or other private clinics is a matter for the General Medical Council.
Specialist Services
5. Ms Sally Keeble (Northampton, North): When he intends to issue consultation proposals to the NHS on commissioning specialist services. [38675]
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Mr. Paul Boateng): The consultation proposals on commissioning specialist services were published on 8 April and issued to the national health service and to relevant professional and voluntary organisations. Copies are available in the Library. The document may also be viewed on the internet, on the NHS web page. Responses are requested by 1 June.
Ms Keeble: I welcome the statement. I am sure that the consultation can lead to substantial improvements in the quality of life in care for people with difficult conditions. Will the consultation also cover services that are needed by people with multiple sclerosis and motor neurone disease, who have very complex care needs, ranging from community to specialist, over a period? In my constituency, those needs are extremely well met at Favell house, which provides that seamless care from community to specialist medical treatment.
Mr. Boateng: The consultation is designed to cover precisely that sort of complex condition. MS is one of those conditions that is well served by the voluntary and charitable sector, which will no doubt respond to the consultation. We look forward to hearing what it has to say.
Mr. Owen Paterson (North Shropshire): Royal Shrewsbury hospital provides world-renowned specialist services. There is a proposal for its amalgamation with the nearby Princess Royal hospital in Telford. Will the Minister guarantee that he will consult locally to ensure that those specialist services stay in Shrewsbury?
Mr. Boateng: The hon. Gentleman has been in the House long enough to know that consultation is very much a part of any proposal. Consultation will no doubt take place in the usual way, and, if it comes to Ministers, he will have an opportunity to make his views known.
Rev. Martin Smyth (Belfast, South): Bearing in mind the fact that there is growing emphasis on devolution throughout the nation and that, at the same time, more specialist skills are needed for technical work in the health service, will the Minister give an undertaking that specialist services that serve the whole nation will be available?
Mr. Boateng: We work closely with colleagues in the Northern Ireland Office, and the hon. Gentleman can be sure that what we propose in this instance will apply throughout the nation. Of course that will include Northern Ireland.
New Deal
6. Mr. Jonathan Shaw (Chatham and Aylesford): What proposals he has for extending the new deal to the NHS. [38676]
The Minister of State, Department of Health (Mr. Alan Milburn): I wrote to health authority and NHS trust chairmen on 11 March, in a joint letter with my right hon. Friend the Minister for Employment, Welfare to Work and Disability Rights, about the benefits of the new deal, encouraging them to support the Government's welfare-to-work programmes. The NHS executive will shortly issue further guidance to NHS employers.
Mr. Shaw: Given that the NHS is the largest employer in the UK, is it not sensible that it plays a part in the Government's new deal initiative? Furthermore, does my hon. Friend agree that the new deal provides a golden opportunity, given the concern about the shortage of nurses, for NHS trusts to attract back nurses who perhaps have been prevented by family commitments from going back to work in hospitals?
Mr. Milburn: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The NHS is in a position both to contribute to and to gain from the new deal. I am pleased to tell him that, when I visited Newcastle yesterday, I learned that the NHS in Tyne and Wear is already considering making available 100 health care jobs through the new deal. I expect that to be followed in other areas.
National Survey
7. Mr. Derek Twigg (Halton): When the first national survey of patients and user experience will be carried out in the NHS. [38677]
12. Mr. Dennis Turner (Wolverhampton, South-East):
When the first national survey of patients and user experience will be carried out in the NHS. [38685]
The Secretary of State for Health (Mr. Frank Dobson):
The first national survey of the experience of NHS patients, users and carers will be carried out later this year.
Mr. Twigg:
Is not the best way of getting patients and staff more involved in an organisation to give them a voice in it? Is it not especially important, given the massive injection of resources that the Government have put into the health service recently, to give people that say and ensure that the money is spent correctly? North Cheshire has already been allocated £6 million for 1998-99, with an extra £1.9 million to reduce waiting lists, which was described by the chief executive of North Cheshire health authority as
"a huge sum of money".
Mr. Dobson:
I certainly welcome any such statements. We certainly need to listen to the people who work in the national health service, which is why I made it my business recently to write to every single person working in the service to ask for comments on the service generally and on local matters.
We are also determined to carry out straightforward surveys of the experience of patients, users and carers; that has never been done before, and it will be the first example of a Government listening to what the people who use the service have to say. Up to now, any assessment has depended on odd random surveys or
anecdotal evidence; some of that may be perfectly valid, but we want to find out systematically what people think about the services that they are getting.
Mr. Turner:
Is this not an excellent and fitting way in which to celebrate the 50th anniversary of our national health service, created by a Labour Government? Will not a new, dependable, modernised health service be created by this new Labour Government to take us into the next 50 years?
Mr. Dobson:
I endorse everything that my hon. Friend has said. It is always worth repeating for the record that the Tory party voted against the establishment of the national health service. People need reminding of that from time to time.
A genuine survey of patient opinion will confirm what polls conducted by the commercial pollsters show: if asked what they think about the national health service generally, people say that it is pretty good; but if asked about the service that they and their family got, they think that it is brilliant. It is necessary to emphasise the extent to which people who use the national health service are satisfied with the treatment that they receive.
Mr. Simon Hughes (Southwark, North and Bermondsey):
After the rough ride that the Secretary of State got at the Royal College of Nursing congress last week--
Mr. Hughes:
No, but I was there the next day.
Does the Secretary of State agree that we do not need a national survey of user and patient experience to confirm that, a year on from Labour's general election victory, community hospitals are closing or threatened with closure; a quarter of trusts and authorities project deficits; there are more than 10,000 vacancies in the NHS; and waiting lists are up 100,000 instead of down 100,000? Is the right hon. Gentleman telling us that that is saving the NHS? Is not the truth that, a year on, the NHS is far from safe in the Labour Government's hands?
Mr. Dobson:
All I can say in response to the hon. Gentleman's usual whingeing, moaning contribution is that the figures announced today show that the health authorities serving seats represented by Liberal Democrat Members are getting an extra £73 million to help to deal with waiting lists. People--I refer not to constituents but to the whingeing, moaning Liberal Members of Parliament who purport to represent them--should show some gratitude.
Dr. Julian Lewis (New Forest, East):
Will the survey of user experience include women raped on mixed wards in acute psychiatric units? Will the Minister explain why new units with mixed wards are still being built in London, despite the opposition of a range of mental health charities? Is it not disgraceful that last Friday the Government again blocked the Mental Health (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill, which would prevent users unfortunate enough to go into an acute psychiatric unit from having such horrifying experiences?
Mr. Dobson:
It is news to me if new mixed wards are being opened. If they are, I will put a stop to it.
Audrey Wise (Preston):
I welcome my right hon. Friend's last remarks, and the national survey. Does he
Mr. Dobson:
What we propose is intended to supplement the current evaluations and pilot schemes. The object of the exercise--pilot schemes and evaluations as well as the national survey of opinion--is simply to identify the things that are right and ought to be encouraged and the things that are wrong and should be discouraged, and in that way to improve the performance of the health service. That is what everyone in the country wants, and all the 1 million people working in the health service want.
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