Health and Social Care Bill

My Lords, I shall be brief, bearing in mind the hour. What I have to say about Amendment 26 applies to all the amendments in this group. Their aim is quite simple: to ensure that those working in the health service and those who are its patients in rural areas are not forgotten as we plough through this enormous Bill. I hope that we will be able to improve the quality of services, protect and improve public health and reduce inequalities in rural areas as we do so. The Bill has not been rural-proofed. Although it is about the National Health Service, too often when we discuss the NHS the emphasis is on urban, rather than rural, areas. I have declared my interest, as I did at Second Reading. I am the honorary patron of the Dispensing Doctors’ Association and, as such, am very proud to raise issues for dispensing doctors—in other words, rural doctors and their colleagues. Dispensing doctors dispense from their surgeries. They live and work in rural areas, giving a service that is vital to rural patients. Without their dispensing from their surgeries, those living in the more remote areas of our countryside would have to travel first to their doctor’s surgery and then to the nearest pharmacy to get their prescribed medicines. These two places might be many miles apart. Mostly, this would be in areas where public transport services are very few and far between or, more likely, where there are none at all. Therefore, without the care and supervision provided by dispensing doctors, patients would face even more difficulties in getting the analysis of what they need and the correct medicine than they do at present. Many patients in rural areas do not drive, especially women, older patients, those with disabilities, those with longer-term illnesses and those with small children. In addition, families increasingly cannot afford to run two cars. Therefore, if the main breadwinner needs the car to travel to and from work, the remaining partner finds it difficult to travel distances to collect medicines or prescriptions. That is why the one-stop shop of a dispensing doctor’s surgery is so necessary. Rural areas must not be forgotten in the turmoil of changing the National Health Service in the fundamental ways outlined in the Bill. This weekend I had the pleasure of attending the annual conference of the Dispensing Doctors’ Association in Chester. I heard at first hand the worries that dispensing doctors and those who work with and for them face. They need to be consulted as changes are proposed. They feel—rightly or wrongly—that they are not given a fair crack of the whip at the present time and that their needs appear to be subsumed under the viewpoint of those working in the overall NHS. If the term ““rural”” is spelt out in the Bill, it would be much more difficult in future to pass over the needs and aspirations of those working in the health service in rural areas and of the patients themselves, whose involvement is so important. I feel particularly passionate about these issues, and hope that the Minister will understand my reasoning and have sympathy towards it. I beg to move.