| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Elderly People
7. Mr. Bill Michie (Sheffield, Heeley): If he will make a statement on his plans to improve services for elderly people. [122866]
The Minister of State, Department of Health (Mr. John Hutton): We are determined that older people should receive higher standards of care from the NHS and social services. That is why the national service framework will, for the first time, set national standards for the care of older people. Our plans to develop intermediate care services will also play an important part in promoting the health, independence and social inclusion of older people. We shall announce our response to the royal commission on long-term care later this summer.
Mr. Michie: I thank my hon. Friend for that reply. Earlier this year, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health announced that he was setting up a new tier of intermediate services between hospitals and primary care. Can my hon. Friend inform the House what form that is likely to take? What steps have been taken to deal with age discrimination in the NHS?
Mr. Hutton: We shall announce detailed proposals on the introduction of new intermediate care services across the NHS later this summer. Like other hon. Members, my hon. Friend will be aware that intermediate care involves a variety of different services, some of which are designed to support people more effectively at home, some to prevent them from being admitted to hospital in the first place and others to improve the active recovery and rehabilitation of older people when they are ready for discharge from hospital. It is certainly clear that we need to improve the range of services available to older people in all those three key areas, and we will certainly take forward detailed proposals to do so.
I make it clear to my hon. Friend, his constituents and everyone listening to Question Time that age discrimination--discrimination of any kind--has absolutely no role in the NHS. It fundamentally contradicts a basic ethos around which the NHS was established: treatment should be available on the basis of clinical need. We fully subscribe to that and shall challenge and root out any practice in the NHS that discriminates against older people simply on the ground of their age.
Miss Julie Kirkbride (Bromsgrove): The Minister has already been made aware by my hon. Friend the Member
for Ludlow (Mr. Gill) that there are about 500 people outside the House campaigning against the closure of Kidderminster general hospital.
Mr. Andy King (Rugby and Kenilworth): Opportunist.
Miss Kirkbride: For the elderly citizens of Kidderminster and of my constituency of Bromsgrove, can the Minister explain how their services will be improved by taking the 20-mile journey to the Worcester hospital when some of them cannot drive and bus services are infrequent, if they exist at all?
Mr. Hutton: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State addressed some of those concerns when answering the hon. Member for Ludlow (Mr. Gill). On services for older people, all I will say to the hon. Lady is that her constituents will benefit from the additional resources and the new services that we will make available to improve care for older people. When those announcements are made and she can see the benefits, I hope that she will be the first to say that the Government are doing the right thing.
Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody (Crewe and Nantwich): Is my hon. Friend aware that private nursing homes do not maintain the same standards as NHS units? Should there be any suggestion that people should vacate NHS beds and move to units that do not maintain the same standards, many of us, as we would not accept that for members of our own families, would not accept it for our constituents.
Mr. Hutton: My hon. Friend is exactly right, and neither would we. That will not happen. When those new services are developed, we shall make clear the specification that we expect in return for the investment. I can tell her that we are also taking parallel measures to improve the standard of care in all nursing homes, and we will make further announcements about that in the near future. Let me make it clear to her and to the House that there is no question of the new intermediate care services being in any way second tier or second class. They will be of the highest possible quality. We shall make sure of that.
Nurses
8. Mr. Andrew George (St. Ives): If he will make a statement on recruitment and retention of nurses in the national health service. [R] [122867]
The Minister of State, Department of Health (Mr. John Denham): More than 6,000 extra qualified nurses were working in the national health service in September 1999 than at the same time the previous year and Cornwall has more than 100 whole-time equivalent extra nurses than it had at the general election. The 2000 nurse recruitment campaign has generated more than 45,000 calls and more than 5,500 former nurses have returned, or are preparing to return, to the NHS since February last year. Applications to nurse training
increased by 73 per cent. last year, including a 100 per cent. increase in applicants from black and ethnic minority backgrounds.
Mr. George: I appreciate what the Government are doing, and it is fair to recognise that the problem of nurse and midwife shortages cannot be resolved overnight, but does the Minister accept that nurses are still a long way from being treated on a par with police and teachers in respect of career path opportunities, pay and conditions, opportunities for early retirement and access to pay, training and retraining? Is he happy with the present situation? If not, what plans has he to reform the nursing profession for good?
Mr. Denham: Many changes to the role of the nursing profession are either under way or under active consideration as we draw up the national plan. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has made clear his determination for some of the traditional professional barriers in the NHS to be broken down. That will include enhanced roles and, therefore, better career prospects for nurses. We have already introduced the nurse consultant grade--the first posts are being created--and we are also taking action on the working conditions and working lives of nurses and other health service staff. We are publishing standards on family-friendly employment, for example. All health service employers will be expected to meet them and receive accreditation. We are trying to enhance the professional career and role of nurses and to offer more flexible employment to enable the many nurses who have to balance home and work responsibilities to do so more successfully.
Ms Rosie Winterton (Doncaster, Central): My hon. Friend has obviously had great success in recruiting more student nurses. Will he assure me that he is giving serious consideration to representations by organisations such as Unison and the Royal College of Nursing on student bursaries, which would enable student nurses who are recruited to be retained in the service?
Mr. Denham: It is clearly important that we do not waste the talents of a single person with the ability and commitment to become a nurse. We are therefore examining variations in drop-out rates in universities which provide nurse education, and are also undertaking a review of student nurses' financial support. I do not wish to suggest that we are proposing any fundamental changes to the current system, but we want to examine the details of the way in which the system operates, as raised by organisations such as Unison and the RCN.
Waiting Times
9. Mr. Ian Bruce (South Dorset): What the maximum waiting time is for a patient to enter a national health service hospital. [122868]
The Secretary of State for Health (Mr. Alan Milburn): The standard, which was introduced by the previous Government, is that nobody should wait more than 18 months for admission to hospital. Most patients are seen much more quickly than that, and about 70 per cent. are admitted within three months of being placed on a waiting list. However, there is little doubt that too many
people are waiting too long for treatment, which is why, in formulating the national plan that will be published next year, we are considering the best way of getting waiting times down.
Mr. Bruce: I am sure that the House will be aware that the Secretary of State did not answer the question on the Order Paper, so I shall ask him an easier one. In the 13 million propaganda leaflets that he recently put out, he stated that he now wanted the national health service to put patients first. Will he tell the House whom he thinks that doctors and nurses have been putting first for the past 50 years?
Mr. Milburn: Of course doctors and nurses put patients first. However, in their responses to the leaflet campaign and in my discussions with them on visits, they say that all too often they feel that they are having to fight the system, with which many fundamental things are simply wrong. The system does not work at its best for patients or staff because, for example, there are too many professional demarcations between staff and organisations. All hon. Members know from constituency experience that the divide between health and social care particularly bedevils the care of elderly people and people with disabilities. To deal with those problems, there must be radical reform and wholesale investment in the NHS to ensure that we win the war on waiting throughout the health service.
Mr. Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston): I am sure that my right hon. Friend recognises that one way to improve waiting times is to solve career gap problems. Indeed, the Minister of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham), has already referred to nurse recruitment. What advice would my right hon. Friend give to one of my constituents who, having been accepted, tells me that lack of child care prevents her from getting through the process?
Mr. Milburn: That certainly is a problem. Our advice to NHS trusts is that they need to get a grip on those precise issues. Many barriers stand in the way of people coming into nursing and, indeed, staying in the profession. Although there are concerns about pay, it is a question not just about pay but about the conditions under which people are employed. Sometimes, the NHS is too inflexible as an employer. If my hon. Friend examines employment and pay structures in the NHS, he will see that they owe more to 1948 than to the 21st century.
We must change that. Of course, we must put money in to recruit doctors and nurses and give the system more beds, but we now have an opportunity to reform radically the way in which the whole system works.
Mr. Peter Viggers (Gosport): In January 1999, one of my constituents was told that she needed a triple heart bypass operation for which the waiting time was nine months. Eighteen months later, she is still waiting, despite the fact, a month ago, the Minister of State, the hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham), told me in a written answer that the waiting time for cardiac surgery in my area was 15 months, although the aim was
to reduce that to 12 months. Will the Secretary of State apologise both to my constituent for not giving her timely treatment and to the House for giving an incorrect reply?
Mr. Milburn: I am not aware of that particular case, but if the hon. Gentleman wants to write to me, I will of course look into it. As I have continually made clear, there is no doubt that waiting times for treatment, especially heart surgery, are too long. That is because we have a historic under-capacity in heart surgery. I cannot conjure heart surgeons out of thin air; it takes six or seven years to train a heart surgeon, and there are only 171 operating in the NHS in England because the Government whom the hon. Gentleman supported failed to make the battle against coronary heart disease a priority. We are putting that right.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |