As the noble Baroness, Lady Burt of Solihull, has set out, the amendment would ensure that when a victim of domestic abuse was compelled to move to a different area with their children, the children would receive NHS care or treatment no later than they would have done if they had not moved. I certainly agree that it is important to recognise the impact of domestic abuse, and the trauma it can cause, on the health and well-being of children. As the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, pointed out with some powerful examples, the impact can be both physical and mental. I appreciate her recognition of the approach that we are taking in the Bill to children as victims of domestic abuse.
It is a key principle that access to NHS care is in on the basis of clinical need. When patients move home and change hospitals, the NHS should take previous waiting time into account and ensure, wherever possible, that these patients are not put at a disadvantage as a result. As noble Lords will be aware, waiting times may vary across the country and between services. Different services experience different challenges in terms of local demand, which can affect waiting times in those areas, and it is important that there is local flexibility to manage this.
Decisions about clinical prioritisation must consider a patient’s needs in the context of all the other patients who are in need of the same service. Patients with urgent conditions should of course be seen and receive treatment more quickly. Regardless of circumstance, clinical commissioning groups and providers have a duty to provide services within the maximum waiting times set out in the NHS constitution.
To summarise, all patients should receive high-quality care without any unnecessary delay. Patients can expect to be treated at the right time and according to their clinical priority.
The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, was right to point out the challenges posed by devolution and the fact that we have a number of national health services. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, was also right that people fleeing domestic abuse might be doing so internationally, both to and from the United Kingdom. In England, under the NHS constitution, patients
“have the right to access certain services commissioned by NHS bodies within maximum waiting times, or for the NHS to take all reasonable steps to offer … a range of suitable alternative providers if this is not possible.”
All bodies commissioning healthcare services must assess the health requirements of the populations they serve, take account of inequalities in access to and outcomes from healthcare services, and commission the services they consider necessary to meet the population’s need. Where the systems or processes of the NHS are an impediment to equitable treatment for this group, it will be important for the NHS to work to ensure that such impediments are removed, and we will support and encourage that.
As noble Lords may know, the NHS Long Term Plan sets out a number of measures to improve access to services—for example, creating an extra 50 million general practice appointments a year within the next five years as part of the 2020-21 GP contract. In children and young people’s mental health services, we have committed, through the long-term plan, that by 2023-24 at least an additional 345,000 children and young people aged from birth to 25 will be able to access support via NHS-funded mental health services and school or college-based mental health support teams.
We have introduced two waiting time standards for children and young people: one regarding treatment for eating disorders and one for those experiencing a first episode of psychosis. We were on track to meet both those standards before the Covid-19 pandemic hit. The recent spending review included £1 billion to address backlogs and tackle long waiting lists by facilitating up to 1 million extra checks, scans and additional operations. Those are just some of the actions that the Government are already taking in this area.
To conclude, I reassure the noble Baroness that a child’s need to access and receive health services will be assessed and services provided according to clinical need, which will consider the individual needs of the child. It is right that we trust clinicians to take decisions about a patient’s treatment, and the NHS long-term plan, as I have set out, includes a number of measures to improve access to services. I hope, in light of all that, the noble Baroness will be content to withdraw her amendment.
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