Clause 15 - Code of practice: improvement notices
Health Bill
10:30 am
Jane Kennedy (Minister of State, Department of Health; Liverpool, Wavertree, Labour)
But if a price tag came with failure, the effect of the amendment would be to provide trusts with a perverse incentive to fail to comply with the code of practice. That would mean that the new legislation, as amended, would actively encourage trusts to take inadequate action to protect patients against health care-associated infections. It would actively increase the very risks to patient safety that the measures are designed to reduce. It is hard to imagine that that is the desired outcome of the amendment, but that is the effect that we believe it would have. For that reason, I hope that the Committee will resist the amendment should it be pressed to a vote.