Clause 11 - Patients' Forums: Entry and Inspection of Premises
Health and Social Care Bill
6:45 pm
Mr Paul Burstow (Sutton and Cheam, Liberal Democrat)
I want to ask a couple of questions arising out of page 15 of the explanatory notes, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight referred this morning. It would be helpful if the Minister could provide some further clarification. Paragraph 69 talks specifically about access and states:
``Access will generally be limited to areas where patients are permitted access (including consulting or treating rooms) and to reasonable times agreed''.
My hon. Friend rightly identified a number of places where patients may not normally seek access. However, in discharging a patients forums responsibilities, they should properly have access to places such as the mortuary, kitchens, laundries and so on. It would be useful if the Minister could confirm that the explanatory notes are wrong and that it is the Government's intention to widen it in that way. If not, it would be unfortunate if the explanatory notes were taken to be the basis of what this clause is about.
I want to talk about the amendments standing in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight. What we are seeking to do here, in the same way as the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond), is to turn this permissive power to make regulations into a duty on the Secretary of State to make regulations. We then want to go further and stipulate specifically in the Bill that the regulations should allow for unannounced visits. Unannounced visits are invaluable for getting a picture of how the NHS is performing, and when CHCs undertake such visits, they often uncover things that may not revealed if the trust is aware of the visit. It is important that the Government are clear and upfront that they intend and envisage that, in all but the most extraordinary of circumstances, it would it be possible, to undertake unannounced visits in the same way as CHCs do now.
Amendment No. 86 deals with the issue of reporting. It seeks to establish that, having undertaken such visits, patients forums should be reporting to the relevant trust after a period of 60 days. Also—this is important to establish the interconnections between the various bodies that are to replace CHCs—it deals with the fact that the forums should report to the overview and scrutiny committees, the ILAF and the health authority. All those organisations that have an interest in how the trust is performing should be in the picture in respect of what the patients forum has found.