Baroness Brinton (LD)

My Lords, I want to echo the comments of the Secretary of State in the other place about the appalling treatment of Achamma Cherian, who was stabbed in the Royal Oldham Hospital last Saturday. It is absolutely intolerable for any member of NHS staff to be treated in this way. Can the Minister reassure your Lordships’ House that staff in A&E especially are protected, but also throughout our NHS? I want also to start by thanking our NHS and social care staff for their remarkable effort. One of the problems that our NHS and social care staff have faced is total exhaustion since the winter of 2019-20. Immediately following the winter pressures, we were faced with a pandemic. Everybody in the NHS is now saying that this winter feels much worse, simply because it is yet another year of winter pressures. Ambulance services have had to change their advice across the country to warn of being overstretched. A leaked memo from the West Midlands Ambulance Service says that patients who had collapsed with abdominal pain and vomiting, which are category 3 and 4 calls, and even, in the periods of highest demand, with heart attack or stroke, which is category 2, were told, “We don’t have an ambulance available to respond to you and it may be hours before one is available. Is there any way you can arrange safely to get to a hospital emergency department?” I am minded to tell the House that, when I got a bus the other day that passed University College Hospital at Warren Street, a number of people got off who were clearly extremely unwell and being taken to the hospital by their families. What are the Government planning to do to support patients who need urgent ambulance services that are not available—for reasons that we understand are often to do with backlogs in A&E, queues and so on? The Statement says that the experience of patients this winter is unacceptable, and we on these Benches agree. It is the opposite of a vicious circle: it is a circle of hell, not just for patients but for staff. I note that the Secretary of State commented in the Statement on what he saw when he was visiting, but worse is to come. We know from the Royal College of Nursing survey published earlier this week that we have patients dying in corridors, with nurses feeling absolutely unable to provide support for them. It is not just 14 years of underinvestment; frankly, we are now seeing the problems of the wrong reforms that happened some years ago now. That has resulted in particular in pressure on primary care. The Statement focuses on hospitals but does not address the real crises that are going on in primary care. In addition to the issues of funds and the planned extra doctors, who will take a while to come in, what are the Government planning to do to prevent hospitals constantly referring patients back to primary care when they need just an X-ray or a test, rather than being dealt with by the doctor they are seeing in hospital? The emphasis of the Statement is obviously on the current high level of infections. It comments on the more than 5,000 patients in hospital beds with flu, but it does not say that we need to add to that RSV, pneumonia and Covid. The problem is that there is no weekly data from the UKHSA, which no longer collects and publishes such data. I hope the Government are prepared to consider reinstating that. An interesting graph on social media about two weeks ago set the peaks and troughs of all these infection spikes over the last three years against the increasingly long absences of NHS staff due to extended sickness, and they mirror exactly. I ask the Minister—who will remember that when she was in opposition, I asked this of many Ministers—what is happening in hospitals to encourage staff, when facing infection spikes, to wear masks and to encourage others to do so? This is about getting the basics right. The Chancellor has made an investment this year. Compared to past winter investments to cover the winter crisis, how much is going to be there for the long term—or, by the time we get to March, will it all have been sucked up by the current winter crisis? The Statement says that it is not too late to get yourself vaccinated. I have to tell noble Lords that, if you are a clinically vulnerable patient—and I count myself in that category—it is. GP services keep being given deadlines, which they pass on to patients. Patients then discover that they cannot get the vaccines at their local surgery. If they are inspired to go and find help elsewhere, that is fantastic. However, I suddenly got lots of texts from my surgery saying, “You haven’t been vaccinated yet. Go and get vaccinated”. I had been vaccinated. The problem is that the pharmacy database does not relate to the GP database. When will that be remedied? I have been going on about this problem for well over a decade. It is ridiculous that I have to intervene and say, “Actually I have had it—at your request”. I have talked before about primary care, and it is shameful that the previous Government did not provide enough vacancies for newly qualified GPs last year. I credit this Government for providing some support and money this year to make sure that is happening. Will this continue to happen in future years or is it one-off, one year’s money? While the extra funding for general practice is welcome, it is not enough without the contractual change between primary care and secondary care. Have the Government taken account of that? It is not solving the real problem, which is that GPs and their staff are facing phenomenal pressure in their systems. To conclude, most people are saying that this is the worst crisis we have faced in years. Unlike other parties, particularly the former Government, I am not prepared to blame the current Government for that. I credit the Government for the steps they are taking, but will they look at the longer-term issues that need to be dealt with to get our NHS back in a stable condition so that patients can rely on the service, from ambulances through A&E, general practice and hospital service?