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Older People's Rights (Health Care)

What is appropriate is that people implement best practice in care. If we need to clarify that, I am certainly willing to do so, but I would not want to give any impression that we were returning to the days when older people were left to languish on acute NHS wards, entirely inappropriately, for long periods, which led to a deterioration in their mental and physical health. We can certainly consider how to make it clear what best practice is. I shall run quickly through some other relevant changes that we are making. In terms of messages to the NHS, we have issued ““Human Rights in Healthcare””, a framework for local action. In guidance on how NHS trusts should implement equality schemes, we have included age, even though there is no legal requirement to do so. As for the regulators, the Healthcare Commission and the Commission for Social Care Inspection have approached their regulatory responsibilities with a strong human rights focus, particularly CSCI when making judgments about the quality of social care provision. In respect of the new Care Quality Commission, there will be new provider registration requirements from 2010. We will consult on those and make it clear that the convention on human rights should be a significant guide for the new requirements under the commission. On the training of front-line staff, we are bringing together regulators and providers of education and training at an event in April at the Equality and Human Rights Commission, specifically to consider those who have the most influence over the training of leaders, managers and front-line staff. We want to talk to them about how the content of training can more appropriately reflect human rights legislation and a human rights culture. We will hold a similar event in May, but it will be aimed at front-line staff, leaders and managers in the health service and social care system. I should like go into more detail about the other levers that will make a difference to achieving the aims of the Human Rights Act. I shall just reel those off before bringing my remarks to a conclusion so that my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon can speak. I believe that world-class commissioning should make a major difference in securing human rights. I believe that our national campaign to put respect for dignity at the heart of health and social care is making a difference, and I shall announce the extension of that campaign soon. I believe that the development of CSCI standards towards star ratings will make a difference, as will the development of a national dementia strategy this year. The roll-out of psychological therapies means that older people in every part of the country will have much greater access to such therapies. The new deal for carers, which will be announced by the Prime Minister later in the spring, will hopefully lead to major changes in the experience of family members, who are often not treated as we would like them to be treated by the health and social care system. Equally, caring itself has an impact on the health of carers, and we need to consider that as part of the new deal. I have referred to the transformation agenda in social care. Putting more power and control into the hands of the people who use the system through personal budgets and greater information, advice and advocacy is far more likely to lead to packages of support consistent with the Human Rights Act 1998 than the historical or traditional way of providing services. We are reviewing the entire system of adult protection in this country, and that review will cover the way in which vulnerable adults are protected by the health, social care and criminal justice systems. I have mentioned the Green Paper on the future of the care and support system, and my colleague Lord Darzi is in charge of a review that will ask, ““Having fixed the foundations of the national health service, how do we move towards creating a world-class health service?”” Creating a world-class health service involves more than just celebrating the fact that most people in this country are very satisfied with the quality of clinical care that they receive from the NHS. People are nowhere near as satisfied with the personal care that they often get on NHS wards, for example, and that is particularly relevant to older people, and to customer care. As well as improving clinical care in the NHS and the relationship between the NHS and social care over the long term, it is incredibly important that we improve the personal care, not just the medical care, that people receive, in the NHS. We are also considering a new constitution for the NHS, with a focus on rights and responsibilities for both staff and patients as well as on greater accountability to local communities when making decisions about the NHS than may have been the case in the past. Culturally, there has not been the same openness in the NHS as in local government and other public services, so we need to consider what mechanism we can introduce to make the system more accountable and give patients and communities more power and control over the decisions that are made and the services that are developed.