Vulnerable people will be doubly failed if there is no independent support for them when they are let down by health and social care services, a councillor said.
Brighton and Hove Independent councillor Mark Earthey said that people like him, who have been failed by NHS complaints procedures, would have no other option than legal action if Healthwatch Brighton and Hove goes.
He was speaking in support of a motion proposed by Green councillor Raphael Hill calling on the council to write to Health Secretary Wes Streeting to stop the closure of Healthwatch England and its regional subsidiaries.
The motion went before councillors at a meeting of Brighton and Hove City Council at Hove Town Hall on Monday 13 October. It was amended by Labour much to the two opposition councillors’ disappointment.
Councillor Earthey said that it was it was incredible that he was pleading with Labour to keep a vital public service. He spoke about the battle he and his daughter had with the NHS after his wife’s death from cancer last year.
He said: “We went to Healthwatch because we’ve been repeatedly stonewalled and failed by the existing NHS complaints system.
“We have anecdotal evidence that suggests many lives are at risk due to a systemic fault in the NHS cancer diagnostic algorithm.
“By the time error is discovered, the cancer is so far developed that extremely costly remedial surgery and therapy is required. In many cases, including my wife’s, that treatment is too late.
“We went to Healthwatch because we wanted a calm, detached and unbiased assessment of our case. We did not want to be forced down the path of litigation to get to the facts.”
Councillor Hill said that Healthwatch Brighton and Hove had already questioned whether integrated care boards (ICBs) like NHS Sussex could deliver independent scrutiny, particularly because it had lost 53 per cent of its funding and is merging with NHS Surrey.
Labour amended the motion to dilute concerns about the implications for older people should Healthwatch be scrapped.
Councillor Hill said: “It’s surely intuitive that older residents in our city will be more likely to need independent support when they encounter system failures with social care and health provision – so I urge Labour to listen to our Older People’s Council.
“The same applies to autistic people like myself and all residents with a disability.
“We need independent scrutiny to help fix failures in health and social services so that nobody is disadvantaged in accessing these services due to their protected characteristics, including age.”
Councillor Hill said that Healthwatch Brighton and Hove had helped more than 38,000 people since 2013, written 350 reports and made 1,800 recommendations.
Labour councillor Gary Wilkinson said that, as chair of the council’s Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee (HOSC), he was aware that Healthwatch Brighton and Hove played a vital role in helping many vulnerable residents.
Councillor Wilkinson said that the amendment recognised that reform was under way and that the council should shape the future.
He said: “This isn’t about downgrading scrutiny. It’s a broader effort to integrate health and social care services.
“That means we need more collective oversight. Our mandate pushes for stronger democratic accountability. More elected representation, not less.
“It asks for a common sense and a joined-up approach across the region because patient voices don’t stop at city boundaries and neither should scrutiny.”
He said that the public did not care what was said in the chamber but they wanted to be heard, helped and to have a health system that worked for them. He said that this would be delivered by the Labour proposal.
Conservative councillor Emma Hogan said that Healthwatch made an excellent job of ensuring that NHS leaders heard people’s voices.
Councillor Hogan said: “Healthwatch, especially locally, do an excellent job, ensuring as they say that all sections of the community are represented in the decision-making process and ensuring NHS leaders and other decision-makers hear your voice.
“It is absolutely imperative that scrutinising organisations exist and are entirely independent.”
The amended motion asked the council leader to improve senior representation of elected members in the new NHS Sussex and Surrey ICB.
It also called for the leader to work with the upper-tier councils, future unitaries and Sussex mayor to develop a “common approach to capture the voice and viewpoints” of health system users.
The council noted Healthwatch Brighton and Hove’s work since 2013 and the campaign objecting to the proposals to abolish the independent watchdog.
100% correct that the government’s decision to scrap Healthwatch will hit most vulnerable hardest.
The government keeps removing safeguards and scrutiny bodies and they can be an important safeguard that protects people when things go wrong. Just look at what removing “red tape” did in housing and the role that played in the building safety crisis.
So many shortsighted decisions being made at the moment, and cutting corners and decreasing opportunities for external and independent scrutiny is a bad thing imo.
Surely calculating the worth of this Watchdog is simple.
What is the cost of this Watchdog weighed against the cost of additional legal actions against the NHS if Healthwatch no longer exists?
If it saves more money than it costs and helps people, case closed. It should remain and it would be short-sightedness in the extreme to get rid of it.
Really glad you’ve changed your mind since your last comment, and I completely agree with you.
What is it with Labour governments and independent health scrutiny? The Blair government axed the old Community Health Councils (CHCs) because they were too independent of central government and the old Department of Health and now this which is a big mistake. Notices of Motion are rarely (if ever) taken notice of by anyone outside the council chamber (and I should know as I had to sit through hours of these when I was a councillor!). However in this case it would have been good if the Labour group had actually put the interests of the people of Brighton and Hove first rather than the personal ambitions of certain senior Labour councillors by amending this Notice of Motion.
Guess none of it is surprising given Wes Streeting’s clear plans to outsource many NHS services to the private sector.
The independent Centre for Health and the Public Interest make quite clear their view that the government’s plans to use the private sector to deliver more NHS care is likely to exacerbate the risk of making the NHS a poorer service for poor people and increase health inequalities.
It’s moves like this Healthwatch one, and some of the restructuring of ICBs that will remove important safeguards. They are individually decisions which don’t get much media traction, but as a whole are eroding the NHS further and will have implications on patient safety and access to treatment.
To put things into context, in the current financial year, the Department of Health & Social Security has set aside £60.3 billion to settle negligence claims. The annual cost of Healthwatch is £25.4 million. However, the government is not suggesting there will be any savings, since the NHS element of Healthwatch functions will transfer to ICBs, whose own budgets are being reduced by more than 50%. The Secretary of State’s proposal shifts the responsibility to scrutinise the deliver of social care to local authorities, which also provide or commission those services. In some quarters that has been described as being asked to mark your own homework, since the independent scrutiny delivered by Healthwatch will have been removed.
Here is a quote from the Chair’s communications delivered at the first meeting of the Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee (HOSC) to be chaired Labour’s Cllr Gary Wilkinson on 9th July:
“We have also recently learnt that it is likely that both Healthwatch England and local
Healthwatch organisations may be abolished. This is concerning news. Healthwatch Brighton &
Hove provides really important services locally, ensuring that local people have up to date
information about health and care services, sharing people’s experiences of services with
commissioners and providers, and supporting individuals to navigate their way through a very
complex landscape. I know that members of this committee, as well as many other local
individuals and organisations, feel very strongly about the abolition of Healthwatch. If members
feel it would be helpful for me to write to the Secretary of State on behalf of the committee, I
would be happy to do so and will ask support officers to coordinate something.”
The Labour dominated committee agreed with his concerns and unanimously voted in favour of him writing to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. The letter has yet to be written or sent.
If how he has been quoted in The Brighton and Hove News report is accurate, it will be interesting to learn what information he has been given that has reassured him that patient and service users’ voices will be listened to under the new arrangements envisioned by the Secretary of State, a question I am certain will be posed to him at the next HOSC meeting.