Clause 16 - Intervention orders
Health and Social Care Bill
10:30 am
Mr Paul Burstow (Sutton and Cheam, Liberal Democrat)
As this is my first contribution to the Committee's deliberations, Mr. Maxton, may I welcome you to the Chair and say how pleased I am to be a member of a Committee dealing with such an important subject?
The amendments deal with a crucial aspect of that subject—age discrimination in the national health service. I suspect that all members of the Committee will have received letters of complaint from constituents telling of their personal experiences of the NHS, and that many of those letters will have advanced the argument that, at least in part, age was a determinant of their access to treatment.
Last year, in its on-going campaign to highlight age discrimination, Age Concern published a report documenting the testaments of those who had experienced age discrimination. It also gave statistical evidence to demonstrate that it is not only the public who believe that age discrimination and age-based rationing exists within parts of the NHS but that it is the view also of general practitioners. The amendments seek to provide a definition of age discrimination and to provide that the criteria for making age-based decisions in the health service are taken into account by the Secretary of State in respect of some of his funding decisions.
I was prompted to table the amendment by a letter from a constituent, who wrote to me following her mother's experience of what can only be described as less than satisfactory treatment, which left her in a poor condition. Her ward was not cleaned, and I am afraid to say that the attitude of the staff was all too often unsatisfactory. Assumptions were made that contributed to the unsatisfactory care that she received.
Age Concern would want me to draw to the Committee's attention specific examples that demonstrate a growing concern about age being used as a basis for making decisions within the health service. I believe that the Department of Health some little while ago published research showing that 70 per cent. of renal care units used age as a basis for making decisions on access to their services, which is a questionable practice. Similarly, until recently, breast cancer screening was not available to women over the age of 65. It is hardly surprising that the prevalence of death due to cancer among people in that age group was so much higher; they would have benefited from the screening programme. The NHS plan includes a commitment to deal with that.