Examination of Witnesses (Questions 190
- 199)
WEDNESDAY 8 NOVEMBER 2000
RT HON
ALAN MILBURN,
MR JOHN
HUTTON, AND
MR COLIN
REEVES CBE
Chairman
190. Can I welcome you to this meeting of the
Committee. Can I particularly welcome our witnesses, the Secretary
of State, Mr Hutton and Mr Reeves. We are trying to find you a
nameplate, it will be here in a moment. Would you each mind introducing
yourselves to the Committee.
(Mr Milburn) Alan Milburn, Secretary
of State for Health.
(Mr Hutton) John Hutton, the Minister of State for
Health.
(Mr Reeves) Colin Reeves, the Director of Finance
of the NHS Executive.
191. When we met Mr Reeves last week we briefly
explored the Concordat, amongst other things. I wonder if I could
begin by raising one or two specific things about the agreement
last week with the private sector. I am interested in why the
Government has entered into this Concordat. In particular, it
is common knowledge that the health service has made use of the
private sector for very many years. My understanding is we currently
spend around one and a quarter billion pounds in the private sector
at the present time, 4.8 per cent of the total spend. As that
is already happening, why have you had to specifically sign this
Concordat in the way that you did last week?
(Mr Milburn) I think for a pretty simple reason, Chairman,
and that is that right now the NHS is short of capacity. I think
it is fair to say that given the levels of investment that the
Government is now making, it is important that colleagues remember
that the investment over these four or five years is going to
be pretty substantial set against the historic trend, and certainly
the historic trend has been running at around three per cent in
real terms for the last 30 or so years and over the Spending Review
years it is going to be running at about six per cent in real
terms. There is a very real opportunity here to expand the capacity
of the service. I think most people looking at the NHS today will
recognise that although there is a big opportunity to expand the
range of treatments that we can offer and the speed of treatment
that we can offer to people, right now we have what is an under-doctored,
under-nursed and arguably under-bedded system. Certainly in the
short-term we have very clear capacity constraints. Clearly it
takes time to put these right, it takes three or four years to
train a nurse, it takes double that to train a hospital doctor
or a GP. We also know that there is spare capacity in private
sector hospitals, for example. I think this Committee has expressed
concerns in the past about the occupancy levels in NHS hospitals
which are running at around 82 or 83 per cent on average. I am
told by the independent sector, by private sector providers, BUPA
and the like, that their average occupancy levels are around 50-55
per cent and arguably falling. What you have within the National
Health Service is, I think, a system that frankly is not so much
short of cash now, which has certainly been the position for very
many decades, but a health care system that is short of capacity.
It seems slightly anomalous to me that if there is spare capacity
that is available within private sector hospitals, for example,
that we should not be taking advantage of that for the benefit
of NHS patients. This is a key point. The care under the Concordat,
and remember the Concordat is a national framework agreement between
the Department of Health and the Independent Health Care Association,
the nuts and bolts of how the relationships are going to be bedded
down in practice will be hammered out on the ground between local
NHS Trusts and private sector providers. Nonetheless, if there
is spare capacity there we should be taking advantage of it. The
patient, regardless of the setting, will remain an NHS patient
and the care will be provided for free.
192. You mentioned that the NHS is under-doctored
and under-nursed, and one of the reasons is that the NHS trains
staff, trains medical staff, trains nursing staff, and they disappear
into the private sector. What consideration have you given to
the way in which you are effectively boosting the private sector,
and in some areas that will result in staff being further lost
to the National Health Service?
(Mr Milburn) I think there are a couple of responses
to that. First of all, the situation in regard to doctors and
nurses in the private sector is slightly different. It is true
that by and large private sector hospitals do not employ their
own medical staff, with one or two exceptions, maybe a medical
director here and a clinical director there. It is true that largely
for their day-to-day work they rely on NHS consultants, that is
absolutely right. As you know, the Government has very clear proposals
on NHS consultants in private practice for the future.
193. Which do not seem to square up with the
Concordat, they seem contradictory.
(Mr Milburn) I do not think they are. Let me come
back to that specific issue in a moment. Let me deal with the
specific issue of capacity and this charge that is made against
the Concordat, and I suppose against the Government by definition
therefore, that somehow or other we are about transferring resources
from the National Health Service, and I mean staff resources,
into the private sector. I do not think that is the case. Nurses
are in a slightly different position. There are around 8,000 nurses
employed by the private sector hospitalsemployed by them.
There are many more, as you know, employed by private sector nursing
homes and so on. The option that we favour and the option that
we would like to see actively pursued, certainly in the short-term,
is for private sector facilitiesoperating theatres that
are lying idle or hospital beds that are not being used in private
sector hospitalsto be made available to NHS patients and,
if you like, to be staffed by NHS doctors and possibly by NHS
nurses.
194. Possibly by NHS nurses?
(Mr Milburn) Yes, possibly by NHS staff.
195. Not necessarily?
(Mr Milburn) Not necessarily. That is the option that
we would favour. Let me give you a concrete example. This winter,
as in previous winters down the ages, the National Health Service
will largely move quite rightly, as many health care systems do,
from elective work to emergency work, it will put emergencies
first. By and large nobody would have an argument with that, it
is the right thing to do. However, some surgery will be displaced
and we already know that elective operations, for example ear,
nose and throat operations, will be displaced. I do not say for
a moment that ENT surgeons are going to be sitting around twiddling
their thumbs, because by and large these are pretty busy people
and working damned hard for the National Health Service, but if
they are displaced and if the patients who should be receiving
treatment are displaced, and if there is labour that is available,
if we can match that with capacity that is available in private
sector hospitals for the benefit of NHS patients then that seems
to me to be a sensible thing to do.
196. You do not think that what you are proposing
will end up drawing into the private sector staff currently working
in the NHS?
(Mr Milburn) No. If you go back to the starting point
of this, this is about how you take advantage, for the benefit
of the National Health Service and for NHS patients, of capacity
that is currently lying idle. As you are aware, the Concordat
actually covers three areas: elective work, what we have been
talking about now; so-called intermediate care, which we may come
back to in a moment or two; and then critical care is the third
area. There is spare capacity there and it would seem anomalous
to me, and I would guess pretty perverse to patients, if we did
not take advantage of that. Let me answer the specific point that
you raised in relation to our policies in regard to NHS consultants
and the future of their private practice and our policies in relation
to the Concordat with the private sector. In fact, far from pointing
in opposite directions, they are pointing in the same direction.
That is about maximising capacity. As far as NHS consultants are
concerned, we are going to massively expand the number of NHS
consultants over the course of the next few years, a huge increase
of 30 per cent, 7,500 more consultants than we have now, and by
and large that is pretty welcome. It has been welcomed in the
service and I think it is even welcome to those representing consultants.
They would probably like to see more and if we can do more we
should certainly do more. There is a quid pro quo here.
If, as everybody wants, we want to see more patients treated more
quickly then we have to ensure that as we are growing NHS consultants
we are taking maximum advantage of their skills for the benefit
of NHS patients. If you like, what we are trying to do here is
produce for newly qualified consultants a new career structure,
a new career path for them. So in the early years of their career
when they have just qualified, and frankly when they are at their
most eager, we maximise their contribution to the National Health
Service by, for example, saying to them that for up to seven years
they have got to be working exclusively for the National Health
Service. In the middle point of their career, when they are perhaps
in their forties and so on, then, sure, they should be able to
get access to private practice providing, of course, they can
demonstrate compatibility with NHS service objectives. In the
later stages of their career, rather than working them hard, as
we continue to do now in their fifties, as hard in their fifties
as in their thirties, what we envisage is consultants moving over,
after they have worked hard for the National Health Service, to
more mentoring and training and, frankly, less front line clinical
work. The net benefit of that will be that we will get more out
of our NHS consultants when we want to and actually we will end
up retaining more of them.
197. You have mentioned that private sector
nursing staff could be used to treat NHS patients, but what about
consultants who may be NHS part-time consultants who are also
working in the private sector on a private basis? Could they be
used working in a private hospital?
(Mr Milburn) Existing consultants, yes.
198. I am not talking here in terms of their
NHS work, I am talking in terms of their private work.
(Mr Milburn) Yes.
199. They could be?
(Mr Milburn) They could be.
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