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Baroness Royall of Blaisdon: My Lords, I welcome the information given by my noble friend the Minister, but I regret the fact that there are still some people who have to stay in mixed-sex wards. What are the Government doing in the interim period to ensure that the dignity and privacy of patients who have to be in those wards are maintained?
Lord Warner: My Lords, I shall pick up a matter raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Knight—namely, the misreporting she described which, I think, appeared in the Sunday Telegraph. As was clear in that misleading newspaper report, it is always inevitable that there will be some clinical emergencies whereby hospitals have to take the most appropriate action for the patients involved. We are using the hospital building programme, on which the party opposite are usually notably silent, to improve the accommodation. While this Government have been in office, we have spent some £250 million on improving patients' privacy and dignity.
Lord Chan: My Lords, in mental health wards there is a high risk of problems with mixed-sex wards. Is the Minister entirely convinced that all our mental health hospitals have no mixed-sex wards?
Lord Warner: My Lords, the information that I have is that compliance with our guidance in mental health accommodation is even higher than in acute units. The latest data show that 99 per cent of mental health wards comply with our objectives.
Baroness Barker: My Lords, the Minister will be aware of the MIND report in September 2004, in which 25 per cent of mental health patients recorded having been in mixed-sex wards. Can he confirm that there is still a significant number of children and young people who are held in mixed-sex psychiatric wards?
Lord Warner: My Lords, I do not have the data on children in psychiatric hospitals, but I can tell the noble Baroness that the MIND report used a different
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definition of single-sex accommodation. Moreover, the sample size was very small and included information from former users dating back as far as two years after they were in hospital.
Baroness Sharples: My Lords, is the Minister aware that, last year, I stayed in one of the 3 per cent hospitals to which he referred, and that I was in a mixed ward? I agree with the noble Baroness opposite. It was extremely embarrassing; we all felt very uncomfortable.
Lord Warner: My Lords, I am sorry, but if the noble Baroness would tell me where she was, I shall let her know what the circumstances were.
Baroness Thomas of Walliswood: My Lords—
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, this question goes back a long way. Perhaps the Minister will recall that in 1995 I promoted, and this House passed—although the Commons did not—a Bill to outlaw mixed-sex wards. That was 10 years ago. Despite what Ministers on both sides of this House have said and the promises that they have made to get rid of such wards, they still exist. Will my noble friend the Minister assure me that staff in the National Health Service are being appraised of the view of this House, and of the population generally, that those promises should be carried out fully?
Lord Warner: My Lords, I think that people are being a little unfair on the NHS in this area. The NHS is confronted with the fact that this will go on under whichever government are in office. People will be admitted as emergency cases and hospitals will have to do what is right clinically and find the most appropriate placement for those individuals—men or women. I think that there is confusion in some noble Lords' minds about the difference between single-sex accommodation and single-sex wards. Earlier I said that the guidance on this issue has been exactly the same under this Government as it was under the previous government. The NHS guidelines require single-sex accommodation, which is defined as: single-sex sleeping areas, which may embrace bays rather than whole wards; separate bathroom and toilet facilities for men and women; and, for trusts providing mental health services, safe facilities for patients who are mentally ill. We have delivered those objectives, while the previous government did not.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My Lords, does my noble friend accept that, over the past seven years, transforming this accommodation has been a massive undertaking and there has been substantial success in achieving the target? Is it not time that we started praising the NHS rather than continually knocking it?
Lord Warner: My Lords, I could not agree more with my noble friend. That is why we have consistently paid tribute to the hard work of NHS staff in
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delivering the improvements that we have seen in the NHS under this Government. The knocking copy comes from the other side of the House.
Earl Howe: My Lords, some months ago, my noble friend Lady Noakes tabled a series of Questions for Written Answer in an attempt to find out which NHS hospitals still have mixed-sex wards. The Government declined to supply that information. Why do Ministers believe that the public do not have a right to be told where mixed-sex wards are still to be found?
Lord Warner: My Lords, I go back to my earlier answers. I have been talking consistently about single-sex accommodation and not single-sex wards. I have gone to some trouble to try to explain that to the House and to noble Lords opposite. As I have said, a number of hospitals are not compliant, the reason being that they have outstanding building works, many of which will be completed in the next 12 months or so. As I said in my Answer, in May we shall be making public the results of the 2004 survey in this area.
Medical Graduates
Earl Howe asked Her Majesty's Government:
Bearing in mind the future needs of the National Health Service, what actions they are taking to attract new graduates into the medical profession.
Lord Warner: My Lords, I think we are introducing a new institution of health Questions in this House.
Medicine continues to be a very popular choice, and English medical school intakes this autumn are planned to be more than 6,050—the highest figure ever. That will be more than 60 per cent higher than the 1997–98 intake. Since the extra places announced by this Government in 1999 came on stream, almost 8,200 more students have entered medical schools in England. These are the NHS doctors of the future.
In addition, some universities have introduced four-year fast-track graduate-entry medical degree courses. In October 2004, 691 students entered these courses in England against a planned figure of 590. NHS bursaries in the form of NHS-funded support in years two to four are also available to English-domiciled students undertaking the new four-year graduate-entry medical courses.
Earl Howe: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that helpful and positive reply. However, is he aware of the grave concern expressed this week by the BMA that, as a result of the financial cuts in prospect under the research assessment exercise, it will be impossible to increase the numbers of medical graduates that we need and that some long-serving academic doctors are now staring redundancy in the face? What comment does the Minister have on that?
Lord Warner: My Lords, on the subject of medical academics, through the UK Clinical Research
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Collaboration I commissioned Mark Walport of the Wellcome Trust to undertake a review into this issue. His report has been received; we are considering it and hope to make an announcement shortly. It will improve the career pathways for doctors who are pursuing a route of academic medicine. I do not think that we accept the BMA's figures on all aspects.
Lord Walton of Detchant: My Lords, does the noble Lord accept that the decision by various UK medical schools to introduce the fast-track route towards a qualification in medicine for science graduates is most welcome? For some years, I was a trustee of the Foulkes Foundation, which gave grants to people with PhDs in science to enable them to study medicine in the hope—largely fulfilled—that they would subsequently become doctors working in academic medicine. Will the Government do all they can to increase the number of science graduates entering medical schools and the number of schools that offer these fast-track routes to qualification?
Lord Warner: My Lords, we now have 14 medical schools offering four-year fast-track graduate entry. I pay tribute to the contribution that the noble Lord has made in this area. It has been a success, and the fact that, as I said in my Answer, the numbers are continuing to go up and that there were 100 more subscriptions than had been planned for in last October's intake gives testimony to the fact that this has been a great success.
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