Clause 51 - Annual reviews
Health and Social Care(Community Health and Standards) Bill
2:30 pm
Mr David Lammy (Parliamentary Secretary, Department of Health; Tottenham, Labour)
No. Health care professionals say that they want to see investment going into the NHS and they are worried about proposals to cut that investment. As a result of my responsibility for
emergency services, for example, I know that they are pleased to see a Government prioritise emergency care and not regard it as the Cinderella service that it was considered before. Health care professionals want innovation and the spread of best practice, and that is being achieved through the Modernisation Agency and other things. They accept the need to drive up performance and to have a tough new inspectorate.
We are the Government who seek to take that forward, so I do not accept what the hon. Gentleman has to say. Independent inspection equals CHAI using its judgment in assessing NHS performance, but it must be right that the Government, on behalf of patients and the public as a whole, ensure that the criteria reflect priorities that we have rightly set.
The hon. Gentleman suggests that we are not concerned with health outcomes. I remind him—he should know this—that last year's performance ratings covered health outcomes. I do not know whether he had a look at those ratings. He will understand that mortality is clearly a health outcome, a very important one. Emergency readmissions are a health outcome, as is returning home from treatment. There are eight indicators in all to measure outcomes of clinical treatments. Again, the hon. Gentleman seems confused about performance indicators and whether they confuse health outcomes. For those reasons, and the reasons that I gave previously, it is right and proper that the elected Government are able to determine NHS priorities. CHAI should provide an independent assessment of how well NHS organisations have met those priorities.