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Joint Statement by the Joint Ministerial Committee on Health

Ministers responsible for health services in all parts of the United Kingdom committed today to work together on areas of shared interest to deliver improved health services for the people they serve.

As an early priority, they pledged to work together on the following new initiatives

* Working in partnership, a working group of officials will exchange best practice on addressing winter pressures, in particular building on best professional advice on the use of flu vaccines. The group, which will comprise representatives from each administration, will report back to the administrations before the next meeting of the JMC.

* Improving performance through examining how systematic comparisons can contribute to further improvements in patient care, enlisting available expertise in each country to help advise on how to develop best performance measures and management.

* Strengthening patient care through new ways of working. Following the visit of the Prime Minister and Rhodri Morgan to Llandough Hospital to see for themselves, Wales will take the lead with other administrations in producing a report detailing how technology can be used to meet patients’ needs through tele-medicine and tele-health innovations. Tele-medicine provides a technical foundation to transform the patient experience. It can make access faster and more local. It allows treatment and consultation in the more familiar surroundings of the local health centre. And through telemetric monitoring of patients, it can also allow vulnerable people to stay in their own homes rather than be hospitalised.

* Sharing best practice. The administrations will co-operate on means for spreading best professional practice using the opportunities presented by internet technologies. This will bring best practice to the attention of the people who know best - those delivering the service - to allow them to compare their performance with that of others and share successful new ways of working.

* The administrations are committed to ensuring that health services are designed and delivered with a very clear patient focus. The Scottish Executive has taken this approach as one of its key commitments. At a future meeting of the JMC, the Scottish Executive will share with the other administrations their proposals for empowering patients in the NHS in Scotland.

The Prime Minister stressed that it is a strength that responsibility for health services is devolved to the constituent administrations of the UK. Health services need to be developed and delivered by those close to the people they serve, be it in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland or England.

Each administration must provide solutions that focus on their countries’ and regions’ specific needs. But there is a shared interest in working together to identify best practice and benefit from innovative responses to common needs. That gets the best of diversity and partnership. That is why arrangements for joint ministerial working were built into devolution. Health is an important further example of the UK government and the devolved administrations working together to exchange best practice and experience.

At the meeting Ministers from the devolved administrations considered how their priorities covered many areas of common ground, particularly around issues such as modernisation and service design, shorter waiting times, greater patient focus, staff issues and an agenda for change. They focussed on the scope that there was to share experience and practice to tackle some of the problems and to benefit from innovation and good practice which exists right across the NHS.

The Committee heard of the specific health needs of Wales and how the National Assembly is developing its plan to improve services reflecting the extra money - an extra £110m - made available to the NHS following the budget. In particular they heard of the health care challenge that came from the relatively poor health of people in Wales partly reflecting the legacy from coal mining and past industry, the age structure, and the lack of investment to produce the hospitals able to deliver modern health care

This will not be put right overnight. But the meeting heard of the determined way the National Assembly for Wales is developing its programme including through intermediate care, joint target setting and integration of planning for primary and community services with linked social care services. In the light of the budget outcome in Wales, additional programmes will be put in place to tackle the length of time people wait for treatment and to improve services.

In conclusion, the Prime Minister said that it was clear that in all parts of the UK, and all parts of the NHS, the case for reform was accepted. He said that today’s meeting had been an extremely important part of the process of reform. It was clear that across the UK there was a shared determination to modernise the health service to deliver better health care and to deal with the variations in performance and work to make sure that all parts of the NHS performed at the level of the best. He said that it was also apparent that many of the problems the NHS faced were common to each country. He said that the purpose of the JMC was to ensure that relevant expertise could be better shared, and best practice used to drive up standards across the NHS. He said that, following today’s discussion, follow-up work should be done on how to use shared expertise and best practice in areas such as improving cancer care, tackling waiting times, flexible working and the demarcation of responsibilities, making best use of new technology, improving joint working between the NHS and social services.

The Prime Minister added that today’s meeting marked a new phase in post-devolution working. There may be different solutions in different parts of the UK but what united everyone was a commitment to improve the quality of healthcare for everyone in all parts of the country.

Future meetings will continue to share experience on best practice and innovatory experience, including in areas such as patient empowerment, treatment and prevention of cancers and heart disease.

7th April 2000

Notes to Editors

1. The role of the Joint Ministerial Committee (JMC) is set out in an annex to the Memorandum of Understanding which was agreed between the UK Government, the Cabinet of the National Assembly for Wales and the Scottish Executive in October 1999. The Memorandum of Understanding was presented to Parliament as Command Paper 4444. The text is available at http://www.cabinet-office.gov.uk/cabsec/1999/memorandum/index.htm.

2. The JMC meets in a number of functional forms. The Health Committee is chaired by the Prime Minister. Its membership comprises:-

Rhodri Morgan, First Secretary, National Assembly for Wales
Donald Dewar, First Minister, Scottish Executive
Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer
Alan Milburn, Secretary of State for Health
Peter Mandelson, Secretary of state of Northern Ireland
John Reid, Secretary of State for Scotland
Paul Murphy, Secretary of State for Wales
Andrew Smith, Chief Secretary to the Treasury

Jane Hutt, the Assembly Secretary with responsibility for Health and Social Services, and Susan Deacon, the Scottish Health Minister, also attended the meeting.

3. Other Joint Ministerial Committees have been created on the Knowledge Economy and Poverty, to allow the administrations to exchange information and best practice in these areas. These committees are chaired by the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

4. Less formal meetings of Ministers also take place to discuss issues of common interest and concern, eg on agriculture.