Health and Social Care Bill

My Lords, as I set out in our previous discussion on education and training, the Government are putting in place a strong national system for education and training, with a strengthened focus on quality outcomes. We have introduced a clear duty on the Secretary of State to ensure that such a system is in place, and are now making good progress with establishing Health Education England and the local education and training boards. We are acutely aware of the importance of a safe transition to the new system and are proceeding with care and at a sensible pace to ensure the new system is fully up and running by April 2013. As noble Lords will be aware, we have confirmed that we will set up Health Education England as a special health authority in June 2012, so that it can take on some operational functions from October 2012 and be fully operational from April 2013, when it will take on the strategic health authority education and training functions. I repeat those assurances today. It will have an independently appointed chair and non-executive appointments. For this reason, we do not think that that part of Amendment 16, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Patel and others, which would place a duty on the Secretary of State to set up Health Education England as a new special health authority, is necessary. I hope that the undertaking will be sufficient by way of reassurance to noble Lords on that score. Nevertheless, in addressing the more detailed issues set out in that amendment, it would be helpful to elaborate a little on what I was able to tell the House last week. First, it is important for me to reassure the noble Lord, Lord Patel, and others that Health Education England will draw upon expert advice provided by the Centre for Workforce Intelligence and will work with a range of key partners, including the medical royal colleges, the professional regulators—including the GMC, I can say to the noble Lord, Lord Walton—and the academic and research sectors. It will not affect or cut across the duties or functions of the medical regulators. It will be responsible for the investment of the multiprofessional education and training budget, which currently stands at just short of £5 billion. Indeed, many respondents to the consultation that we held called for education and training funding to be protected; we agree with that and will ensure that Health Education England establishes transparent systems to ensure that organisations that receive MPET funding are held to account for using it for the education and training of the NHS workforce. I was asked by the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, whether the budget would sweep up with it SIFT and MADEL. I am reminded that the MPET budget was created in 2001 and consists of the following three elements: non-medical education and training, or NMET; medical and dental education levy, or MADEL; and service increment for teaching, or SIFT. So the answer to the noble Lord is yes. Health Education England will hold local education and training boards to account for their investment in education and training and for their delivery against national priorities and, critically, the quality outcomes that we will set in the education outcomes framework. That framework will directly link our investment in education to improvements in patient care outcomes and will, we hope, help to address variations in standards. This is new, and it presents the trainers in universities with a fantastic opportunity to drive quality in medical and nurse education forward. I was asked by my noble friend Lord Ribeiro whether Health Education England would have a medical director. It will require strong professional leadership, it goes without saying, and we expect it to have senior medical appointments. Health Education England will build on the work of Medical Education England and the Medical Programme Board, which have done such excellent work in recent years and provided a solid foundation to build on for Health Education England, with its new multiprofessional focus. On the subject of quality, one of Health Education England’s key functions is to promote high-quality education and training that is responsive to changing needs of patients and, indeed, local communities. Quality standards will prove to be of key importance in the contracts that LETBs will hold with higher education institutions, as will the postgraduate deans, of whom I shall speak in a moment. Employers and healthcare professionals will play a leading role in workforce planning and development through the establishment of local education and training boards, working with the education and research sectors. The local boards will identify and agree local priorities for education and training, and plan and commission education and training on behalf of their local health community. The boards will bring together all healthcare and public health employers providing NHS-funded services with education providers, including universities and colleges, the professions, local government and the research sector—and, I can tell the noble Lords, Lord Kakkar, Lord Winston and Lord Hunt, including as well the emerging academic health science networks. We see that element as particularly important. I can tell the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, that each local board will have an independent chair and that we do not expect the chair to be drawn from employers within the LETB geographic area—it should be an independent person.